


Where the Angels Used to Be

by AmityRavenclawElf



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Audrey is Aziraphale, Because the Characters Still Have Their Own Personalities, Does Not Follow Good Omens Plot, Harry and Gil are Human, Multi, The Core Four Are the Four Horsemen, Uma Miracles Them Immortal, Uma is Crowley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: "Have the clouds ever done that before?" the girl who had just been a sea snake- well, a pond snake -asked, crossing her arms."It's a new thing," Audrey answered, trying to keep any snippiness from her tone. Of the two of them standing here,oneof them had done their job today, and that person was not named Audrey. "The Lord is about to invent rain.”The other girl tilted her head, her eyes on the sky, and merely said, "I like the way it smells."





	1. Prologue: The Main Players

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please ignore any anachronisms; I did research this, but my main goal is to entertain. Hopefully there's nothing too egregious, although some of the dialogue will sound modern, for the sake of maintaining character voice. This chapter is more setup than plot, really, hence the time skips and stuff. The next chapter will elaborate on the Four Horsemen.

Audrey would never admit, as she watched Adam and Eve begin their trek from the Garden, that she was internally fuming. Angels weren't supposed to be quick to anger, as a general rule. Not even righteous anger, not really. Angels were meant to be above such things; they upheld what was good and destroyed what was evil, which left no real model for reacting to something like failure. And the fact that her rage, in that moment, was directed at herself- her _own_ failure -in no way changed things.

She had assumed that her own angelic presence would be enough to dissuade the humans from any wrongdoing, but she had been proven wrong. Proven wrong by...by the very silver-tongued fiend who had come to stand next to her just now.

"Have the clouds ever done that before?" the girl who had just been a sea snake- well, a pond snake -asked, crossing her arms. Her hair was thicker than Audrey's, but not as long. The way it hung suspended around her face, it looked as dark and round and elegant as the clouds to which she was referring. Her eyes were deep brown with a sort of constantly-curious gleam; right away, Audrey suspected her curiosity to be the reason she had Fallen. On the whole, she looked convincingly human, except for the patches of scales that were visible on her wrists and neck. There were probably more, concealed under her black robes, but then that was none of Audrey's business.

"It's a new thing," Audrey answered, trying to keep any snippiness from her tone. Of the two of them standing here, _one_ of them had done their job today, and that person was not named Audrey. "The Lord is about to invent rain."

The other girl tilted her head, her eyes on the sky, and merely said, "I like the way it smells."

Perhaps it was the calm in the other girl's tone, but suddenly Audrey couldn't help saying, "So I guess _you all_ are _thrilled_ about what transpired here."

"I wouldn't say 'thrilled'," was the girl's still-calm answer. "No one really knows what to make of this whole Earth thing yet. They just sent me here to scope it out. Keep an eye on things, be an influence. All that."

Audrey was tempted to say something like "Same here," but decided against it.

They stood in silence for awhile, with a tacit understanding that they were waiting for the rain.

"Got a name?" the girl suddenly asked.

"Audrey." After a moment's hesitation, Audrey carried on, "I guess you have one, too?"

There was a smile- a surprisingly toothy one that simultaneously annoyed Audrey and threw her train of thought quite violently from its tracks. Apparently, demons could have nice smiles. "I _had_ one," she replied. "When I was an angel." She stretched, as though having grown tired of standing still. She moved like the water from which she'd emerged. "I'm still thinking of a new one."

"So what am I supposed to call you in the meantime? Snake?" Audrey asked, and registered belatedly that her tone was a little sharp.

"Who said you'd be calling me?" the girl pointed out, taking her eyes off the clouds to fix Audrey with a playful look.

Audrey could not form an answer for a second, but apparently that was fine, because her speechlessness made the other girl laugh. Audrey pursed her lips and primly turned away, to continue watching the departing humans.

She did not see, therefore, when the other girl's eyes suddenly narrowed speculatively. "What happened to your sword?" she asked. "The flaming one?"

Audrey turned quite abruptly back. "Sh-shut up!" was all she could say.

Rather than laugh at her ineloquence again, the other girl merely glanced in the direction of Adam and Eve, at the undeniable halo of orange that accompanied them as they went, and made an appreciative sound in the back of her throat.

"Shut up," Audrey repeated, more quietly, practically mumbling.

"Nice of you," the girl commented.

"Angels are nice," Audrey snapped.

"Whatever you say, Dree."

"It's Audrey." In the brief silence that followed, Audrey became aware that she had lost her temper. "Dree is fine," she conceded, to compensate.

The demon, whose eyes were once again fixed on the clouds, smiled once more but said nothing.

A moment later, the rain fell, and the both of them gasped at the sensation. Audrey felt, in each cold drop, a distillation of love and life that felt as though it was washing her clean of her failure. The other girl made a quiet hissing sound that Audrey didn't know how to interpret and drew her arms in close to her body, a gesture which she would assume denoted discomfort, from someone who _hadn't_ been an entirely limbless snake minutes ago. From this creature, though, Audrey couldn't be sure what it meant.

"It feels..."

The girl didn't have to finish her sentence, though, for Audrey to understand her meaning.

It felt Good.

~~

It was raining the second time they met, too, and like the first time, the demon walked up to Audrey with a question and no real greeting.

"The rest of these humans didn't cut it?" she asked, shouldering her way close amidst the crowd of people gathered to watch Noah.

"Oh, it's you again," Audrey said, feeling extremely jittery but not nearly as irritated as last time. "Hello. Do you have a name yet?"

"Uma," the girl answered curtly. Clearly, the same could not be said for her, regarding irritation.

"Uma? That's the name you thought of?"

"It's what everything sounds like when you're underwater."

"When _you're_ underwater, you don't have ears, do you?"

The hiss that Uma made on this occasion was unambiguously one of annoyance.

Audrey bit her lips to keep the irrational and completely inappropriate laugh from bubbling out. Today was a solemn day. Not a Bad day, but definitely a solemn day. Not a time for giggling, no matter how much her nervous energy wanted to go somewhere.

"I guess your side are all thrilled about this?" Uma said, echoing Audrey's words from their previous meeting with a near-poisonous tone.

"Why would we be?" Audrey asked. "It's deeply sad. Humans were never supposed to succumb to such debauchery that we have to wipe the slate clean this way. They have the knowledge of Good and Evil, and they've chosen evil. The heavens weep."

She didn't have to look to know that Uma's gaze on her was hard. "So that's your angle, angel?"

For some reason, Audrey felt she had to defend herself: "They only told me about it today."

"And that's what they told you? That 'heavens weep' stuff?"

"They said we won't ever do this again, after this time. And Jane foresees that there will be another invention called a 'rainbow', after, and that it will be beautiful." Audrey managed a wistful smile.

Uma ignored this. "Foresees?" She was much too sharp-minded. Much too observant of Audrey's implications.

"From what I can tell, none of us have actually spoken to the Lord since..." Audrey broke off her confession, remembered who she was speaking to. "Oh, what about it?" she said loftily.

Uma didn't say anything.

~~

They saw each other occasionally, after that, and made conversation each time. Usually, it was just casual greetings, light catching up, eventually with a smile or a laugh or a "Fancy meeting you here" thrown in; while they were on opposite sides, there was something comforting about talking to someone who knew the same sorts of things that they did, about the universe and the Earth's place in it. Humans knew nothing of the universe, and their contacts from their respective sides knew nothing of the Earth. Audrey and Uma, meanwhile, knew at least a fair amount about both.

They visited Egypt a lot and ran into each other on the Silk Road at least twice in the 50's (BCE) alone.

The next meeting of note, between them, took place in a tavern in Pompeii in 78 CE.

By this time, both had updated their style of dress considerably, though Audrey still wore exclusively white and Uma still wore exclusively black. Uma's hair was twisted into small knots all over her head, and Audrey's was braided into a bun in the back and curled in the front. Uma's eyes were lined with kohl (She had not gotten over kohl since Ancient Egypt had introduced her to it, centuries ago; fortunately, it seemed to still be in style.), but Audrey's face went modestly unpainted...for now.

"Dree!" Uma greeted her, her speech slightly slurred from drinking. She elbowed the man she was teaching to play senet (presumably with the intention of gambling later) and said, "Hey, Gaius, this 's Audrey."

The man grunted in acknowledgement and barely moved his heavy-eyebrowed gaze from the senet pieces.

"What are you doing here?" Audrey asked, her tone laden with surprise and dismay but no dislike.

"Pl'ing senet; wh're _you_ doin' here?" Uma chuckled, slurring more heavily as she did so.

"I had a bad feeling about Mt. Vesuvius and thought I'd swing by and make sure the locals turn from their vices. Why are you drunk?"

"Have _you_ tried drinking?" Uma's eyes went wide. "It's great. I can see why your guy turned water int' this stuff." She chuckled again. "Gaius gets it. Oh yeah! I talked t' Maleficent t'day. She's a peach. Still not happy about the whole Jesus thing. _So_ sorry if I don't _happen_ to be in Rome or Judea or wherever for a couple of decades!"

Ah. That explained it, sort of. Maleficent was the demon whom Uma more or less reported to; she'd mentioned as much in passing before. There was no love lost there. But then, who could expect there to be? They were demons. But anyway, it explained why Uma might turn to the warm embrace of fermented beverages.

"I think you need to lie down," Audrey suggested. "Are you staying at the inn?"

"Oh, no, no," Uma drawled, rising and leaving Gaius and the senet board behind. "I think I'll head out, have a slither 'round the Red Sea for a while. Or, heaven, maybe I'll go north! Never been north b'fore!"

"Nonsense," Audrey snapped. "You're inebriated. You can't possibly travel while inebriated."

"I'll miracle myself sober, angel," Uma said, like it was obvious.

"Excuse me if I think you'll have difficulty miracle-ing anything in that state."

"You're excused."

Audrey caught Uma's wrist before she could leave the tavern. It was the first time that one of them deliberately touched the other, and when Uma's head turned back to her, her gaze was entirely clear, her eyebrows furrowed warily. Audrey shifted her thumb just a little, to appraise the texture of Uma's scales, before quickly letting go when Uma stiffened. "I have a room at the inn," Audrey said calmly. "You can stay there tonight, if you want. I won't be using it, anyway."

Uma's frown did not relax. Her pupils waxed and waned, like the phases of the moon put on high speed. She ran her fingers lightly over her wrist, where Audrey had held it, and answered, "No thanks. I'll let you win a round of senet, though."

Audrey smirked. "I assure you, you won't have to _let_ me win anything."

They both lived in Pompeii for a while. They were practically neighbors, and each day Audrey went out and inspired good values in the residing humans and Uma inspired what she called "horrible sin" but really totaled out to mild mischief-making, public disturbances, and some petty theft.

Too soon, though, Audrey's bad feeling about the volcano proved itself to be a drastic understatement.

Ash filled the sky, and Uma clambered down the street at full speed, threw open the door to the tavern in which they both had been staying, and shouted, "What the _heaven_ are you still doing here, angel?!"

"I have to put my sandals on before I go outside," Audrey said breezily, tying the strap on one of her shoes.

Growling, Uma yanked Audrey to her feet and out the door, one shoe on and one left behind.

"Wait, no!" Audrey protested, before seeing the actual scope of the disaster and exhaling, "Ohhh..."

"Come on," Uma snapped, dragging a now fully-cooperative Audrey after her as they ran for the coast, where a boat was (miraculously) awaiting them. 

They rowed all the way to the toe of the boot (the boot being Italy) in complete silence. The threat of discorporation had passed, but they remained in high stress, for reasons to which neither would readily admit. The rocking of the boat was so soothing, that it wasn't until about halfway through the journey that it occurred to Uma, _consciously_ at least, that she could have dodged the whole boat and Audrey business altogether by merely turning into a sea snake and making herself scarce. She gave herself the lame excuse that she had forgotten that she was a sea snake. Audrey couldn't help looking back, repeatedly, at what had once been a lovely city. Their rowboat vanished as soon as they stepped out of it, onto steady ground, and Uma miracled Audrey a second shoe.

"Thank you," Audrey said, a bit formally.

They parted ways shortly after.

~~

At some point in the thirteenth century, Uma was in Scotland, because she had never been before and also because she'd heard about some sort of political tensions that might be worth taking credit for.

By this time, she had taken to wrapping her hands and wrists and neck in fabric, to cover her scales. This was not strictly the norm for women, but it was also rather the least of her concerns, when it came to things that made people notice her in thirteenth century Scotland. At any rate, she used _blue_ fabric to do the wrapping of her scales, because she had discovered that she liked blue. She wore a long, navy dress, and a lighter blue dress over it. The only black she kept was in her period-appropriate tights and head-cloth, which were traditionally meant to be white. She kept the kohl eyeliner, as well, because her cold, cold heart still pined for the aesthetics of Ancient Egypt.

It was in this state, and in Scotland, and in the thirteenth century, that she met Harry Hook, a human boy of nineteen.

Uma was sitting in on a meeting between William Wallace and Andrew de Moray at the time; they were on the fence about whether or not she was a witch, but they welcomed her strategic mind once they'd heard her speak. Convincing humans to do things had been a skill of hers since the beginning, for worse or for better.

It was a hot day (at least by the men's standards), so they had the window cracked, despite the sensitivity of the information they were exchanging. 

For about an hour, Uma listened to the men talk, in part about strategy and in part about their gripes with the English.

"You're not gonna want to attack right away," she told them, once they had both fallen silent. "You find yourselves at the north of the river, they find themselves at the south, and you do what? You..." And that was when she spotted him; a young man with dark brown hair and glass blue eyes, peeking in through the slightly ajar window, then ducking out of sight. She did not see or hear retreating footsteps; perhaps he was scared to be caught leaving. A spy. Or just a curious lad. But definitely someone in over his head, and dumb enough to stick around when he knew he'd been spotted. She could only imagine what would happen to him if he was discovered lurking there. Any self-respecting demon would rat him out, just to witness the fireworks.

Wallace cleared his throat. "We what?" he prompted gruffly.

Uma smiled and met the soldier's eye in a way that clearly made him uncomfortable. "You wait," she answered simply.

After the meeting ended and she left for the nearby inn (taking her time on the walk, as the sights were really very pretty), there was no sign of the young man. Perhaps he had run away after all. She didn't have much time to think on the matter, because suddenly Maleficent appeared to her.

"It stinks of humans, here," was the older demoness's greeting.

Uma sniffed. "That's actually sheep. Common mistake."

"Uma." Maleficent's tone positively curdled with dislike. "Do you know what Death has been doing since she was placed on Earth?"

Uma rolled her eyes. This whole spiel again. Maleficent loved bringing up Death, even though her job was completely unrelated to Uma's. "Making people dead," she recited dryly.

"Making people dead!" Maleficent agreed. "And War?"

"Corrupting the hearts of men with discord and conquest."

"That's right. And you. What have you been doing?" Maleficent flicked her sharp, talon-ish fingers at Uma's head-covering like it was particularly offensive. "What is _this?"_

"It's what they wear here," Uma replied, annoyed by the unwelcome invasion of her personal space. "No one would listen to me if I didn't."

"Most of us can tempt humans to sin without them even _seeing_ us."

"Lucky humans."

Maleficent snarled. "I ask again; what have you been doing?"

"I just met with some important general guys."

"You tempted them to abuse their power? To prey upon the weak and vulnerable?"

Uma was silent for long enough that Maleficent made a noise of disgust; then she dully said, "I'm working on them. Don't worry about it. You remember what a good job I did in-"

"I don't believe any of your stories."

Well. With such point-blank hostility, there really wasn't much more for Uma to do than smile her antagonizing smile and say, "Well, Management seems to trust my process. Maybe take a cue from them?" She dared to turn her back on Maleficent. "Don't get your horns tangled in the trees on your way out."

After she had walked away for several seconds, she relaxed her shoulders. Maleficent was incapable of subtlety; if it was silent, then Uma was alone.

In hindsight, it should have occurred to her that she couldn't be the only one taking this path back to town.

"Begging pardon..." a voice suddenly spoke behind her, and Uma startled so hard, a hiss escaped from between her teeth. Whipping around, she saw that the young man from before was standing a short but respectful distance away. He was dressed in a dull, red tunic, with twigs sticking out of his dark hair, and his gaze was wide and locked on her. A thirteenth century Scottish accent and turn of phrase is impossible to transcribe in a coherent way to nearly any modern audience, but let it be understood that he spoke in the former and used the latter for the duration of the conversation (and every conversation that was to follow, for several decades).

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Uma demanded.

"Harry Hook," the young man replied. "I live down that way a piece." He pointed in the direction that they had been walking, his eyes never leaving Uma as he did so.

Uma raised her chin a bit. "What were you doing at Sir Andrew's place?"

"I wanted to volunteer to fight with them...I realized it was a bad time when I heard you three talking about strategies; they'd think I was a spy."

"But you're not?" Uma challenged, smirking.

"Never." 

Uma resumed walking, then, and Harry walked with her. She allowed this; she found she didn't mind him. For now, at least.

"You saw me, but you didn't tell them," Harry said.

"I don't see how I'd benefit from doing that."

"If I _were_ a spy, and I got away, it's you they'd suspect of treachery when their secrets got out."

Uma didn't answer. This observation, put together with her talk with Maleficent, was making her feel like she was being accused of something.

Harry's eyes were alight, though, as he asked, "They let you walk all this way alone?"

A mean laugh escaped Uma. "I assure you, there is nothing on this road more dangerous than me." She met his eyes, sure that he would be either disbelieving (if he had _not_ overheard her conversation with Maleficent) or frightened (if he had), but found, quite shockingly, the opposite of both.

"That I don't doubt, miss," Harry said, his voice soft and ever-so-slightly rough, like he needed to clear his throat. "But I can't fathom why such honorable men would neglect to escort you."

"Who's ever heard of an honorable man?"

Again, Harry failed to be off-put by her words. If anything, he seemed riveted. "May I escort you?"

Uma lost her playful smirk. Fun was fun, but she was pretty sure stringing this poor human along was crossing a line. And as much as her kind enjoyed crossing lines, the idea left a bad taste in her mouth. "Harry Hook..." (He shivered almost imperceptibly when she said his full name.) "...I am hundreds of years old." (He quite underreacted to this news.) "How old are you?"

"Nineteen," he answered, without the slightest hint that he saw a problem. "Twenty, in another two weeks."

"Congratulations. If your intention is to court me, you are in over your head."

"I never expected you'd court me. But I hope you'll let me walk with you."

"And what will your people say?"

Harry shrugged, almost lazily. "I'm sure I won't hear them. Not if I'm walking with you."

So he was a bit of a silvertongue himself. Uma respected that. "Walk with me then."

He did. And the next day, he asked again to walk with her, and again she allowed it. They continued in the pattern in the days and weeks that followed, and shared confidences irregularly (Harry told her about his life and his family, and she showed Harry the scales on one of her wrists and explained her job and how she got around doing it), to the point that, when Uma decided that it was time to leave Scotland, she actually took the time to let him know that she would be going.

What she didn't expect, but perhaps should have, was for him to ask, "Can I come with you?"

~~

"Who is he?" Audrey asked, the next time she met Uma. They were in Mali, because it was the very-early 1300s and Mali was flourishing. Audrey's loose-fitting dress and head-wrap were pale, but notably rosy. She had not strayed from her white quite as much as Uma had from her black, but she _had_ strayed. And that was fine; it wasn't like there was a dress code, right?

Uma's dress was teal, as was the fabric wrapped over her hair, and she still had kohl lining her eyes. She was accompanied by a wiry, pale human boy who moved as though he hoped to singlehandedly ensure that no one in the crowded market so much as bumped into Uma too hard. The human also had kohl around his eyes. Somehow, he had managed to cake on even more of it than Uma had.

"This is Harry," Uma said, placing a hand on Harry's arm. "We met in Scotland a few years ago. Harry, this is Audrey; the one I told you about."

"Good day, angel," Harry greeted, to Audrey's surprise, and he dipped into something like a bow.

Uma smiled indulgently but said nothing of the display.

"For what reason," Audrey queried, "did you acquire a- Pardon me, sir -a human?"

"I don't know what to tell you," Uma said. "He insisted on walking with me, and it just kind of snowballed from there."

"You can't just..._have_ a human!"

"Oh no, she definitely can," Harry said.

"I didn't abduct him, Dree. He asked to come with me."

"Is he a worshipper of the devil?"

"No, he's not. Wait...Harry, are you?"

"I'm not."

"He's not."

Audrey looked between them, feeling bizarrely left out but mostly amused and also bewildered. They looked so comfortable together. Uma looked comfortable. More so than Audrey had ever seen her, around a human at least. The closest Audrey could think of was Gaius from Pompeii, but that had been because of Uma's sloppy, drunken state, not any actual camaraderie. Uma treated Audrey as a comrade, sometimes, in a way, kind of; it was weird to call it that, given that they were actually enemies, but Audrey was at least self-aware enough to know that she and Uma were more open with each other than they were with anyone else. This human, though...The way he hovered near Uma like a queen's personal guard, and the way she caught at his red garments whenever the crowd threatened to separate them...

It occurred to Audrey that something very un-villanous might be at play.

Lowering her voice as much as the noisy setting would allow, Audrey said, "I assume Maleficent doesn't know about him?"

Weight settled in Uma's expression, and Audrey regretted bringing it up. "Why should she?" Uma asked, in a forced light tone. "And even if she did, she'd make her own guesses about what sins I'm inspiring in him."

"I just don't want you to get into trouble," Audrey said delicately. "Or you," she added, with a sad smile, to Harry.

"Dree," Uma said, dragging out the nickname teasingly, "when am I ever in real trouble?"

~~

"Witchcraft?!" Audrey exclaimed, standing with her arms crossed at the foot of a pyre atop which Uma and Harry were tied.

"Oh, like you're _surprised_," Uma said scornfully.

"What about you?" Audrey asked Harry.

"Apparently I'm in her thrall," Harry informed her, with a slight edge to his words, suggesting that he resented the other humans either for suggesting such a thing or for persecuting them for it. "Her witch thrall, that is."

"Yeah, who knows how they came to _that_ conclusion." Audrey was beginning to suspect that Harry was just as bad an influence on Uma as she was on him.

"He did blind one of the guys who went after me," Uma recalled.

"He still has the other eye," Harry protested, though he sounded far from happy about it.

"Oh, I'm not complaining."

They exchanged matching vicious smiles.

"And you couldn't just miracle the ropes away?" Audrey cut in.

"Lovely Lady Maleficent said I couldn't miracle myself free until the last moment," Uma grumbled, sweeping a glance over the humans who Audrey had just snapped into a trance. "Something about the humans' sins being locked in or something. I had everything handled, though."

"How do you get arrested for witchcraft?" Audrey demanded. (Keep in mind, it was still the early fourteenth century, and while witchcraft was a crime, it was not nearly as much of a fear as it would become in the coming centuries.)

"It wasn't that hard. These guys do _not_ like to hear new ideas from brown ladies. Also, I think somebody saw me turn into a snake. But you know they didn't need that reason."

"Well. A broken clock is right twice a day, isn't it." Audrey rolled her eyes before miracle-ing the bonds off of Uma and Harry.

"Thank you," Harry said brightly, while Uma continued grumbling about the whole situation. He clambered down the pile of wood with little regard for splinters; his focus appeared to be on helping Uma down safely.

A human man who had been rounding the corner suddenly screeched, "Witch! Witchcraft!" This time, it was directed at Audrey.

Uma turned a mock-affronted look on Audrey and gasped, "Thou consortest with the devil, woman?!" Audrey fixed a withering look on her, and Uma grinned and snapped her fingers to shut the man up. She started walking away from the pyre, gesturing for Harry, who was glaring hatefully at all of their still-entranced assailants, to follow her (though even Audrey knew that there was no chance he wouldn't) and clearly expecting Audrey to, as well. "So, how've you been since Mali?"

(Harry paused for just a second to kick one of the men in the shin, quite hard, as he passed. The man swayed in place a little but otherwise didn't react. He would snap out of it once they were sufficiently far away, and probably wonder, in the days to come, about the bruise that Harry had just provided.)

"I've been well," Audrey replied, keeping stride with Uma. "France has been inventing all sorts of new foods. Have you had a quiche yet?"

"You know I don't really eat," Uma said, before suddenly stopping mid-pace and swearing loudly and horribly enough that Audrey half-expected someone to grab her and throw her right back on the pyre. "It's been hours! Harry, I told you to tell me when you're hungry!"

"When was I meant to mention it?" Harry asked, a half-smirk on his face that Audrey had never seen there before but couldn't say she disliked. "While they were tying us to the stake, or while they were reading the Bible at us?"

"I don't get hungry," Uma persisted, ignoring his good point. "You have to let me know when you are. Dree, you wanna come with us, to get a bite somewhere?"

"Only if you try a dessert," Audrey said. Though they didn't need to eat, Uma had proven in the past that she could be cajoled into eating for pleasure, if Audrey asked right. "They're really very good; I want to see your reaction."

Uma let out a long groan but shortly said, "Fine."

Harry looked quite impressed with Audrey.

~~

It was extremely easy for Audrey to get sucked into conversations with Uma and Harry for hours on end. When they weren't ranting about current events (with constantly-escalating tones as Harry and Uma fed each other's passion for every subject they brought up; it seemed that, at all times, they were one conversation away from sailing to a distant country and joining a cause, or starting one), they were telling stories. Harry always asked for tales of the distant past, and Uma was happy to exaggerate for him, and Audrey was too amused to correct almost any of it. Anyway, Harry knew that they weren't full truths; he just liked to hear Uma weave the stories, practically perform them.

And when it was Harry's turn to tell a story, he made sure that they were hooting with laughter by the time he was done; Audrey applauded his theatrics, and Uma ran a hand through his hair when he finally collapsed, exhausted.

Audrey and Uma sat in contented silence, peppered though it was with Harry's snores.

"You ever wonder...?" Uma paused a moment, not lacking in confidence, but rather focus; she had stopped to pick something out of Harry's hair. "You ever wonder what would have happened if I'd failed, that first day? If no one ate the fruit?"

Audrey shook her head resolutely. "We can't know. All we know is that everything is going according to plan."

"The Lord's plan?"

"Of course."

"And when was the last time-?"

"Don't."

Uma didn't. Audrey didn't doubt that this would come up again one day, but for now Uma didn't want to disrupt the peace. Imagine that; a demon, maintaining the peace.

It occurred to Audrey that _Uma_ had to be "according to plan", too. A demon who sometimes acted so little like a demon that there were times Audrey felt sure that she was being tested in some way, but never sure _what_ way.

"He's had a long day," Uma mused, so quietly that she was probably not talking to Audrey at all.

"Maleficent knows about him now, right?"

Uma turned a sharp look on Audrey. "As far as Maleficent's concerned, he's just a guy who got accused of witchcraft and was burned at the stake while I got away," she said hotly. Her anger was heated with some people and cold with others, Audrey had noticed. People like Maleficent, and humans she didn't know or like, got Uma's cold side. People like Audrey and Harry got the hot. "What's your obsession with Maleficent knowing about Harry, anyway?"

"I told you, I just don't want you two to be in trouble."

Uma's sharp eyes remained so for just a few seconds longer before she relaxed again, seeming to have decided that Audrey's words were true.

~~

Excepting a fairly uneventful meeting at Constantinople, the next time they saw each other was in the sixteenth century, in a grand ballroom. Audrey was wearing a puffy and decidedly pink gown, with tiny pieces of what she could only assume was red glass adorning the skirt. Her hair was in ringlets, her feet were well-slippered, and she felt as much like a princess as an actual centuries-old angel could want to feel. She sipped at something that tasted the way the harshest reflection of sunlight on water looked, and she tittered politely at aristocratic banter.

Then, somewhere to her left, she heard a voice ask someone, "Is this one yours?" in such a tone that she knew that she would have to turn around.

What she saw when she did turn was a happy surprise, for Uma and Harry were here. 

Harry was dressed every bit as fancily as the noblemen, though he had failed to tuck anything in, and Uma was dressed in a lovely teal gown adorned all over with what looked like blue-green beetle wings. Her collar was black lace and high enough to conceal her neck scales (though the ball's attendees would assume that it was modesty and possibly even mourning), and she wore black gloves on her hands to hide the ones on her wrists.

It occurred to Audrey that she had not actually seen Uma's scales uncovered in a while. She had not seen Uma in her snake form in a while. And Harry had likely seen both; he had been in Uma's company for over two hundred years now.

Wait.

That couldn't be right, could it?

In answer to the other human's question (of course directed at him), Harry answered, "I'm hers," with a perfectly gay tone but a perfectly unforgiving gaze. That he still wore his kohl so thickly (even Uma's eyes were only lined a bit, this evening) heightened the effect; the man who had questioned him left the vicinity, no doubt to start rumors with the nobles on the other end of the room.

Audrey herself had been assumed to be someone's illegitimate daughter, and as such had been treated like a hilarious oddity. Uma would apparently not be afforded even that courtesy, not that she seemed to mind.

"How is he still alive?" Audrey asked, striding up to her...acquaintances and apparently surprising them both.

"Dree," Uma greeted. Her hair was braided up into a spiral, like a seashell. "What do you mean?"

"It's been centuries; how is your human still alive?"

Uma still seemed not to understand the question. "Is that...too long? That's too long?" She turned to Harry. "Why didn't you tell me you were living too long?"

"Why would I?" Harry asked.

"Death is gonna be _pissed_ off," Uma said, but seemed more amused by this than anything. "Oh well. I guess he's immortal now."

"And he's still young," Audrey pressed on. "He still looks like he's twenty."

"I guess I've kind of just been expecting him to." Uma pondered this, then again turned to Harry. "Do you want to grow older?"

"Not particularly; my granddad was bald, and I quite like my hair."

"So do I," Uma said.

"And, this way we look roundabout the same age."

"True."

"This isn't right." Audrey couldn't muster any fire behind her words, though; she liked Harry, and she liked how happy Uma looked with him, and how happy he looked with her. "You can't just...It's against the rules."

"I'm already friends with an angel," Uma chuckled. "Breaking rules is kind of par for the course."

Audrey felt like the room had just spun once, quite fast, and stopped. "What?"

"Oh, see, we went back to Scotland a while ago. Apparently they invented this game called 'golf', and 'par' is-"

"Friends?" Audrey repeated. "We're not friends. We can't be."

She felt guilty when Harry looked legitimately surprised and Uma looked as though she couldn't make sense of her words (which was impossible, as they'd both been around before the Tower of Babel and so spoke every language in existence and yet to exist), but what else could she say? She spoke the truth. She couldn't..._They_ couldn't...And especially not...

Suddenly overwhelmed by those faces and by the accusation that she was friends with the enemy and by the malicious whispers of the humans surrounding them, Audrey turned away and, in true princess fashion, fled the ball.

~~

In some battle or other in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century (It was easy to lose track of how many wars they meddled in), Harry was badly injured.

He insisted that it was nothing serious, but Uma insisted harder that he stay in bed (her bed, incidentally) until he made a complete recovery. She made sure that he ate regularly and got enough rest, and that his bandages were clean.

"We'll run out, if you keep changing them," Harry teased two days in, to stir her from her mumbling about the ridiculousness and ineptitude of a demon healer.

"No more wars for you, for at least a decade," Uma said firmly. "Or until you learn to stop trying to be everywhere."

He eyed the bruise darkening her temple. "Just keeping my promise." He had promised her, about seventy years prior, that nothing that harmed her would go unharmed in return.

And then, quite unwelcome, another voice joined their conversation: "Speaking of being everywhere..."

"Go away, Death," Uma hissed. "It's not his time."

A young woman stood matter-of-factly in the shadows, as though she had always been there. "No, actually, it was his time three hundred years ago. You can't miracle me away forever, No Name. Even if he won't die of old age, eventually he'll get sick, or something pointy will sink just a little too deep."

"Her name is Uma," Harry said, glaring into Death's face without fear.

Uma was suddenly quite sure that she loved him. "Today isn't the day," she told Death.

Death shrugged, arching an unimpressed eyebrow. "Some day." Then she returned to the shadows.

~~

"So," greeted the Head Angel in Charge, appearing to Audrey at kind of a bad time, "how are things going on Earth?"

They were in a dank, gray dungeon, and Audrey was chained to the wall.

Her gaze on Beastiel (an unfortunate name which, to be fair, had not been nearly so unfortunate at the time he got it) was not even incredulous at his unawareness anymore; just weary. "Overall, I'm optimistic," she said, forcing a cheerful tone. "Bit of a hiccup in France right now; the meek are trying to inherit the Earth a smidge too soon."

"But you're on top of it?" Beastiel guessed.

"Come on, you have to ask?" Audrey giggled evasively.

"That's our girl!" Beastiel said. "Make heaven proud!" And then he vanished.

Audrey wallowed in self pity for a few more seconds before she heard a familiar voice echoing at the end of the corridor outside her cell:

"They just hang a blade above your neck and drop it? So brutal," Harry chuckled.

"That's nothing," Uma's voice responded. "One word: crucifixion. When I tell you that was not pretty..."

"Uma?!" Audrey called out, her voice too shrill for her tastes. "Harry?!"

There was silence for a second, then Uma said, "You've got to be kidding me."

And then a second later, the both of them appeared in Audrey's cell.

"What happened to you?" Uma asked.

"I wanted a quiche," Audrey said, and her tone must have been sad enough to earn Uma's pity, because the chains keeping her in place vanished. "What are you two doing here?"

"Storming the Bastille," Harry said, like it was obvious.

"They already stormed the Bastille a few years ago," Audrey said. "Also, this isn't the Bastille."

"So you know that, but you didn't know it was dangerous to just show up here looking like you're about to tell them to eat cake?" Uma raised an entirely-too-judgmental eyebrow.

"Oh _right_. How many times have you two been accused of witchcraft now?" Audrey snapped, crossing her arms.

"Five," Uma answered casually.

"And sentenced once," Harry added. "Uma was, anyway."

"Idiots didn't know how long I can hold my breath."

"You showed them, love."

"You were pretty ferocious, yourself."

"Just keeping my promise."

Audrey buried her face in her hands. Uma could just do things, could take her thirteenth century human friend into the eighteenth century and no doubt into the nineteenth, and run from revolution to revolution all day every day. (Audrey was actually jealous that they had gotten a piece of the Haitian Revolution; she had been too far away to make it in time.) Audrey had to be the Good one, and it was such a lonely thing to be, on this planet that abhorred absolutes. Nothing pure enough to enjoy without some level of guilt, some reservation, some fear. All that, and yet no one in management even quoted the Lord anymore; just assumed, guessed, foresaw.

"Hey," Uma said, inching warily closer to Audrey. "Hey, Dree. You okay?"

Audrey sniffed. "Yeah, I'm doing really, really great."

And that, as well! Uma wasn't supposed to ask if she was alright; that wasn't a demonic thing to do, not in the slightest. Why were they always happy to see each other? Why was Audrey happy that Uma had Harry, and why did she feel left out when they shared private jokes, and why did Beastiel and the others always just leave without asking if this confusing place had made her want to tear her hair out yet?

Uma sighed audibly. "Alright. What say we dress like peasants and go grab a quiche?"

"Why are you so nice?" Audrey asked, her eyes drippy and just as pink as her ill-advised aristocratic dress.

Uma flinched but shortly replied, "I'm not. I'm selfish. Why else would I be going to lunch with a friend and an angel at a time like this?"

Audrey appreciated Uma's phrasing; she wasn't even sure if it was deliberate, but Uma had left it open to interpretation, whether Harry was the friend and Audrey was the angel, or whether Audrey was both.

~~

Both Uma (with Harry) and Audrey were in North America at the same time, but separately, throughout a good piece of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Audrey was an agent on the Underground Railroad and a nurse for the Union Army. Uma and Harry freed slaves rather more overtly and efficiently, and as such had prices on their heads within a week of arriving in the United States and had to journey West to direct their vigilante efforts to assisting the indigenous tribes in fighting off the growing stream of oppressors.

It was over those few decades that Audrey fully and consciously relinquished the idea that Uma could ever _only_ be a demon, or _only_ be treacherous. The correctness of her morals could always be questioned (Audrey had twisted her lips uncertainly when she'd heard rumor of Uma's presence at Harpers Ferry, little though she'd heard about it.), but Uma _had_ morals, and acted on them. And it seemed, in the face of what humans were able to do to each other, that Uma was nearly done hiding it.

She had Fallen from Falling, or something like that.

~~

The World Wars really took it out of them.

Audrey spent both helping out on the home front, mostly (in whichever country she felt needed her most at the time). But of course, Harry and Uma wove in and out of trouble, making disasters where needed.

After the end of the Second World War, Uma and Harry retired to Scotland for a few years; even after all these centuries, Harry still liked to visit, and Uma was too disgusted with America to consider returning for a while, even for a taste of their end-of-war festivities. The first atom bomb had horrified her; the second had infuriated her.

After Scotland, they visited France.

Which was where they met Gilbert Legume.

~~

"You got _another_ one?!" Audrey demanded.

"Hello, Audrey; it's good to see you, too." It was now the 1960s, and while Uma had not forgotten the bombing of Japan, the Civil Rights Movement gave her an opportunity to spite the American government in a productive way. (Her own definition of "productive"; she was a far cry from passive resistance.) She was dressed in a black turtleneck, black pants, rider gloves, and boots, and her hair was in an afro (reminding Audrey, somewhat, of how she had looked in the Garden of Eden, so long ago.)

Audrey, meanwhile, had taken a leaf out of Uma's book and kept to a fashion trend for far longer than it had actually lasted; her hair was in finger waves like a 1920s dancer, and she wore a white cardigan with a 1950s pink poodle skirt.

"That's Audrey?" said the thickly-muscled blond boy, newly added to Uma's posse it seemed. His expression was one of unadulterated wonder and delight, most unusual on someone who looked every bit as old (physically, that is) as Harry, and most unexpected on someone who looked as though he could easily _throw_ Harry. "The angel?"

Audrey smiled and offered her hand. "Hello, nice to meet you. What is your name?"

"Gil," the boy answered, still looking at Audrey like she was a human constellation. So it seemed Uma had a type, and that type was "awestruck and respectful".

"Where did Uma pick you up from? And when?" She could have tried to figure it out herself, could have focused extra hard on the specific words he used and figured out what "language" he was speaking (Heaven knew it was all the same to her.), but that seemed an unnecessary effort when she could just ask.

"France. 1954, I think? I didn't want to fight in the whole Algerian Independence thing, because I don't know anything about Algeria and I don't like to be in fights where I don't know what's going on, but my dad really wanted me to join because he fought in World War II, so it was kind of like a family thing, but yeah so I was going to run away from home, and I already knew Uma and Harry from the cafe around the block from my house, so they let me come with them."

Audrey blinked at the rambling but entirely frank and straightforward answer with which she'd just been presented.

"Oh! Gil is short for Gilbert," Gil added, as though it had occurred to him that this (of all things) might trip Audrey up. "Gilbert Legume. That's my full name. But just Gil is fine, though, because I like the way 'Gil' sounds when Uma and Harry say it. I mean, they say 'Gilbert' well, too, but I guess it's just because no one ever really called me Gil before them, so I thought it'd be nice to keep it like that. Plus, 'Gil' makes me think of the scales on Uma's neck. Like 'gills', you know? Even though she doesn't have gills."

Oh, this one was adorable.

"Hey, Audrey's kind of like you guys," Gil mused with a huge smile, turning to Uma and Harry, who were already smiling as well.

"How so?" Audrey asked.

"People don't normally let me talk this long," Gil said simply.

Audrey succumbed to the idea that the ray of sunshine before her was worth breaking the rules a second time. Still, when the four of them went to catch up at the nearest diner, she studiously ignored Uma's smug grin.


	2. On the Horsemen and the Sorting of the Dead

No one understood Death. Or maybe they did, but they never treated it as just a thing that happened, like bathroom breaks or season finales. Always it was handled with an annoying sort of gravitasse that made it pretty impossible for her to feel like she could be Death and also have other hobbies.

And yet she had a name now. It was Mal. She had made it up a thousand years ago, and it had become steadily less made-up every time she used it. The reason she had bothered making up the name had been to buy some strawberries from an irritatingly chatty farmer. The reason she had bought strawberries was because she had discovered that she enjoyed the taste of them about a decade before _that_ and wondered what it would be like to obtain them the way humans did, instead of just beckoning them into the shadows as she glided through the bushes.

She had likes and dislikes now. She had whims. She wore lipgloss, some days, and purple. She liked purple. She liked it when her clothes were purple and her nails were black and she pulled the soul out of a person and felt it sort of ooze between her fingers, the consistency of dish soap, before flinging it off to wherever it went. (She didn’t actually care much about afterlife stuff; that wasn’t really her department.) She liked dresses where she could see her knees and pants where she couldn’t.

She liked meeting Famine (now called “Evie”) at fancy restaurants- always outdressed but never envious -, pointing out people eating minuscule servings, and commenting, “I think that’s one of yours.” And on one occasion, when a woman had suddenly started choking on a bone in the middle of dinner, Evie had leaned across the table and whispered, in a tone similar to and yet also nothing like the silky one she used on humans, “And that’s one of yours,” with a most enchanting gleam in her eye, and they had laughed loudly enough to draw bewildered looks from the other patrons. She even liked glimpsing Evie’s softer side, when occasionally the cruelty would dim from her eyes, looking at somebody’s scant portions, and she would quietly say, “They don’t know how beautiful they are.”

She liked taking walks with Pestilence, now called Pollution, now called Carlos, through various parks, watching with disgust as he ate entire chocolate bars, threw the wrappers into the grass, and left the chocolate on his fingers. And usually there was a dead squirrel or something _somewhere_, and Carlos would wax philosophical about decay. “It’s funny, because corpses start out just as much litter as anything,” he would say, brow furrowed with intrigue and hand absentmindedly wiping chocolate onto his shirt, “but then, instead of infecting the Earth, they start…feeding it.” And then he would look up at Mal like she might have some wise answer to this (another thing people didn’t understand about Death; she didn’t do wisdom), and she would call him a nerd, and they would have a chuckle and move on.

She liked high-fiving War, who still didn’t have a _name_ name, across every battlefield that had ever been (inventing the high-five in the process), even watching him grow less and less enthusiastic about it, over the millennia; where once he had strutted through the fields of war more victorious than the victors, now he trudged through like it was a chore, murmuring that humans could give him a break for ten minutes, and greeting her almost as an afterthought. More often, nowadays, he invited her to sporting matches. Sports had always been a fascination of his, and although— now that gladiators, chariot races, Viking tug-of-war, and Nile jousting had gone out of style —she considered it a pretty one-sided choice (all of the struggle for dominance that war provided, but none of the casualties), she still liked how he lit up when the game was close and the teams were desperate.

Being the Horsemen, of course they had a bond, but as the centuries progressed, that bond began to feel…different. At its core, sentimental.

When she thought of them with wistfulness, it wasn’t because she was anxiously awaiting their ride to end the Earth; it was because she wanted to…hang out. Maybe go see one of those “movies” War had been telling her about, and, for that matter, brainstorm a new name for War. She wanted to see Evie- who had inexplicably developed such a love for beauty -contend with Carlos, who had such an affinity for accumulating stains on his clothes. 

Humans had slumber parties; she had visited a couple (not that the humans had been glad about that). Why should they have any less than the humans had?

She mulled all of this over as she pulled the soul out of a random elderly human. Of course, she didn't go to the trouble of physically manifesting _everywhere_ a human died, but she might as well be somewhere, and here was as good a place as any.

Maybe she could call them together, for an evening. They weren't technically expected to all gather until The End, but it wasn't specifically _against_ the rules. Or so what if it was? She was Death. Who would argue with her?

With this resolve, she prepared to fling the gooey soul over her shoulder, but a light touch landed on her arm, and a voice said, "Whoa, not so fast."

Mal stiffened and turned a powerful glare on the slightly-taller boy who had interrupted her. He had brown hair, soft features, and an aggressively _pleasant_ disposition. _Just a muffin in human form, aren't ya?_ she thought. Then she noticed the Quality he had about him, plus the fact that he was wearing a completely white three-piece suit, and corrected herself: "An angel?"

The boy smiled, still infuriatingly pleasant. "I'm Ben. We're doing some procedural changes; a few souls got accidentally marked for the wrong afterlife, so Management has said that every on-the-fence soul should be inspected and sorted personally by an angel and a demon. Of course, the _final_ inspection is performed-"

"Judgement Day," Mal interrupted, then flashed a fake smile and scrunched her nose. "I'm familiar."

"Right. But we can still try to sort them first. May I?" Ben reached out his hand for the soul.

Mal handed it over; not like she cared. She made to leave, but stopped herself when she realized that she was unlikely to have a more interesting conversation today. With an amused look at how Ben was practically _cradling_ the soul as he looked it over, she asked, "You said an angel _and_ a demon? Where's the demon?"

"BOO!"

The shout came from behind her, but Mal didn't flinch; she merely turned around with an unimpressed look at the creature who had hoped to startle her. It was dressed in too many colors (not at all like the demons Mal was used to), with big, brown eyes and big, curly hair. She would have looked exactly like a little human girl of maybe-twelve, were it not for her froglike webbed fingers.

The demon girl crossed her arms and pouted. "You didn't even jump."

"You're short, for a demon," Mal observed dryly, but at the same time and in a much more concerned tone, Ben observed, "You look so young! When did you Fall?"

"I didn't Fall," the demon said, rolling her eyes. "My dad is the demon Facilier."

"But..." Ben frowned, even more confused. "I...I didn't know demons could..."

"That's gotta be for me, right?" the girl interrupted, pointing at the soul Ben was still holding. "That's gotta be a bad one."

"Not necessarily," Ben said, still clearly preoccupied. "Listen, if you didn't Fall, then why are you-?"

"Look at it," the girl interrupted him again. "It looks all...icky."

"All souls look like that," Mal interjected, plopping down onto the dead human's bed (and shoving the dead human's body off to make more room).

"What's your name?" Ben asked the girl.

She huffed. "Celia. Lemme see that." She lunged for the soul, but Ben held it up out of her reach for a second:

"Hey, careful," he said. "This is a person. Hold gently." Then he handed the soul to Celia.

She cupped it in her webbed hand. "Look at all those vices. There's no way you can take this one."

"It has virtues, too," Ben pointed out gently. "See, right here? So much love for friends and family..."

"Duh; it's easy to love what's _yours_." Celia rolled her eyes again. "_Demons_ can do _that_. So he was great with his grandkids, so he gave his grocery man peppermints..." Returning her attention to the soul, she added, "Whoa. He was _really_ into birds."

"Let me see?" Ben peeked over Celia's shoulder. "Where?"

"There's a whole hobby section, see?"

"Wow, yeah. I didn't even notice that. You're better at reading these than I am."

Celia looked wary of the compliment, but still smiled smugly.

Mal pulled out her cell phone and sent a text in the Horsemen group chat:

**Death:** _old guy died in a mansion. Sleepover?_

Practically the very second the message went through, there were two responses:

**War:** _sweet! at a clearance sale rn, getting ppl WAY 2 violent over some toasters lol. wya?_

**Pollution:** _Only if we trash the place._

Mal chuckled.

**Death:** _it'll be a crime scene when we're done w it._

She smirked at the emoji Carlos sent in response, then waited expectantly for Evie's text.

"You're right," Ben was saying, grudgingly, and Mal tuned back into that conversation. "Those vices are warranting of punishment. I just..."

"Those are the rules," Celia reminded, turning away slightly when Ben seemed about to reach for the soul. "It wouldn't be fair if a bunch of bad people got to hang out in Heaven."

"Well, giving one person a good thing they don't deserve doesn't take away from anyone else," Ben said.

Celia made a face as if Ben had just said the weirdest thing she'd ever heard. "Then...why did some angels Fall?"

"They _chose_ to Fall."

"I didn't choose to Fall."

"Yeah, I'm gonna ask my dad about that when I get back. I'm sure the older angels don't know that the demons are having kids; you shouldn't have ended up..._There_. You should have gotten the chance to be an angel."

Mal's phone vibrated.

**Famine:** _It isn't time yet, is it?_

Mal rolled her eyes. Evie with the technicalities.

**War:** _dont be such a baddie-two-shoes. whos gonna stop us from hanging out before the apocalypse?_

**Famine:** _:P That's not what I meant._

**War:** _wym then?_

Mal watched the dots that indicated that Evie was typing a reply, but the dots vanished and the reply never came. She poked her lips out a little, annoyed at the idea that Famine was filtering herself. But then, withholding was kind of her thing, wasn't it? It was why people, the Horsemen included, loved being around her; no amount of her presence ever seemed to be enough. She left you hungry.

"It comes down to this: Do you really want this human to suffer for all of eternity?" Ben was asking Celia, and Mal rolled her eyes again for a different reason. Yes, demons wanted humans to suffer. That was kind of their whole thing; envy for the Lord's beloved creations, or something. Angels did, too, but out of pride instead of envy; angels were obsessed with purity, with being better than everyone, and as much as they were allies to humanity in theory, no human could help falling short of angelic expectations. Humans were the only ones who really wanted humans to enter Heaven. Humans and...Ben, it seemed. Ben seemed to actually give half a crap, which was what angels were _supposed_ to be, sure, but apparently he had missed a few thousand department meetings in his existence, because he didn't seem to realize that, in everything but their fluffy words, acquiring humans into the Kingdom was _just_ supposed to be an act against demons, not an act for humans.

Celia let out a long, irritated sigh, but this time she didn't pull away when Ben reached for the soul. "Fine. Maybe I'll win the next one."

Unexpected.

"You're a good sport, for a demon," Mal called out, then smirked at the alarmed look that crossed Celia's face.

"No I'm not!" Her eyes flicked around briefly, as though worried that someone would appear to scold her. Then she turned an unconvincing sneer on both of them in turn. "Now I know Angel Boy's hustle, I'm gonna beat him next time!" And she nodded decisively, then ran off.

Her footsteps echoed through the empty mansion for a few seconds before yielding to silence.

"Did you have to do that?" Ben sighed.

Mal shrugged. "No, but it was fun." Her phone vibrated again.

**Famine:** _I'll be there, btw._

Perfect. "You gonna stand there all day?" Mal asked the angel without looking up from her screen.

The blur of white vanished from her peripheral vision, signifying that Ben had left.

~~

Audrey abhorred sin, and therefore she abhorred _deadly_ sin, and therefore she abhorred gluttony, but in moderation, she found that human food was one of the truest neutral pleasures. There was nothing inherently virtuous or inherently lacking in virtue about it; it was not Good or Evil; it was just _nice_.

She was sitting in the same diner where she had eaten with Uma and Uma's boys when they'd first introduced Gil to her, and in the very same booth as well; they had agreed to meet here every so often to catch up. She was drinking a strawberry milkshake and passing the time scrolling through YouTube comments on her smartphone and moderating arguments. Many human commenters had taken to calling her "tone police"- an affectionate nickname, she believed. She was doing the humans a great service.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise outside, like the shrieking of tires against pavement. It was followed shortly after by a huge metallic crunch sound, and Audrey turned away from her godly deeds and saw, through the diner window, that a Mercedes had just crashed into a pole right in the parking lot. She was half-standing and about to rush out and aid the passengers when she saw Uma crawl out of one door, hooting with laughter.

Audrey sank back into her seat, alarm giving way to amusement, and watched as Harry and Gil extricated themselves, as well. Gil was laughing as hard as Uma was and offered a hand to help her up from the pavement. Harry was grinning from ear to ear but appeared dazed. He had been in the driver's seat; that explained the crash. (Harry operated heavy machinery the way you'd expect someone raised in the thirteenth century to operate heavy machinery. Normally, when the three of them had to drive somewhere, it was Gil handled the actual driving.) She watched as the three checked each other over for injuries, and finding none, proceeded to enter the diner. Audrey smoothed out her pink sundress primly.

It was summertime, so Uma had to be creative about covering her scales; she wore a teal turtleneck with the sleeves cut off, about a thousand gold bangles on her wrists, a black leather skirt, and thigh-high black boots. Her hair was woven with teal braids, and she wore sunglasses (which she now removed) with a pattern of scales on the sides. Gil and Harry both wore white t-shirts, though Gil wore his with jeans and a brown suede vest, a look that he inexplicably pulled off, and Harry wore his with black cargo pants and a red aviator jacket.

"You let him drive?" Audrey said, by way of greeting.

"He had a compelling argument," Uma said, sitting directly across from Audrey, as always. Harry sat beside Uma, and Gil sat across from him, beside Audrey.

"Which was?"

"The car was stollen anyway."

Audrey huffed. "Of course it was. Why did you steal a car?"

"There was this guy who was catcalling this girl," Gil said. "He was following her, too. It was really creepy."

"I...diverted him," Harry said, running a hand through his car-crash-tousled hair and grinning broadly, "and Uma stole his keys."

Audrey suppressed the urge to say _Oh, well then that's fine_ and reminded herself of why she couldn't condone such things. "What if that car was his only way of getting to work? To feed his family?"

Uma groaned. "_Heaven_, Audrey, I'm a _demon_. I'm not gonna account for every domino along the way. We showed him that his actions have consequences; managing the fallout is up to him. He's grown."

"I think I'm gonna order a burger," Gil mused, eyeing the laminated menu that hadn't changed once in the interim decades. "That way Uma can have my fries."

"Thanks, Gil," Uma said, with an indulgent half-smile.

"Whoa, you found a food that you like?" Audrey said, perking up.

"I've liked foods before," Uma protested. "Just because I don't eat often doesn't mean I don't like to, every once in a while."

"She _really_ likes fries, though," Gil outed her. "We went to a buffet once, and the people working there were so confused, because she never gets full, so she kept eating whole plates of fries over and over."

"I only did it to distract them while Harry snuck food into my purse."

"You're stealing from buffets, too, now?" Audrey said.

"It's not stealing," Harry drawled. "It's all you can eat."

"All you can eat _while_ you're in the restaurant."

"Go ahead and report us to Golden Corral, if it means that much to you," Uma said, with that smug grin in place that always drove Audrey up the wall.

Audrey slurped at her milkshake, because she knew that Uma disliked the sound. It successfully wiped the grin off of Uma's face; Audrey smirked at her around her bendy straw while the demoness glowered back. They stubbornly maintained the eye contact long enough for Harry and Gil to order their meals, and while Audrey felt triumphant for having successfully stared Uma down, she couldn't explain the heat that she felt in her cheeks when Uma finally did break eye contact.

The summer sun, maybe. She _was_ in a window seat.

"So, how's Old Beastiality doing?"

"It's Beastiel," Audrey sighed, though the exchange had become so common that she barely registered her own words. "He's alright. A little perturbed, last I saw him; apparently, his son will be doing some field work on Earth. Some sort of afterlife sorting issue; there will be about four or five more angel-demon pairs here at any given time, now."

"What?" Uma demanded. She glanced at Harry and Gil with concern, then leaned across the table to speak in a more confidential tone. (Harry promptly did the same, although it took Gil a few uncertain seconds to join the huddle.) "What will they be doing here? For how long?"

"For the foreseeable future," Audrey said, shrugging. It took her a second to understand Uma's alarm; her secret human boyfriends would be pure bait to the other demons, especially if she was as unpopular as Maleficent's treatment of her suggested. "They'll be low-ranking," she assured Uma. "Just here to sort the dead. They'll interact more with the angels than with you."

Regardless, Uma's eyes remained wide, her hand anxiously fisted on the sleeve of Harry's jacket.

"It's alright, love," Harry said quietly. "We're not scared of any demons, except you."

"And you can just tell them you're corrupting us, like you always do," Gil added. "They don't notice we're the same people every time; they just think you keep going for the same kinds of guys. Remember, you said they can't tell humans apart very well?"

Uma did not seem to much absorb their comfort. Her head was bent downward, her eyes trained on the table, and Audrey gleaned from the movement of her long eyelashes that her mind was racing. Probably thinking through every risk this new policy posed to her boys. Plotting out what she would do if anyone or anything threatened them.

"Hey." Audrey risked slipping her hand into Uma's free one and moving her head even further into Uma's space, so that they were practically breathing the same air. "They'll be okay. If you're worried about how the other demons will treat them, you can loan them to me every now and then."

Uma let out a breath of air; one syllable of laughter. "What, like joint custody?"

"If you can be corrupting them, I can be evangelizing them."

"That could be fun," Gil mused. "Audrey's nice. And that way we won't be there when Maleficent checks in."

Uma inhaled deeply, then let it out. She released her grip on Harry's jacket. Relaxed her shoulders. Inhaled again and looked Audrey in the eyes. "You smell nice, you know." Then she sat back.

Audrey blinked, straightened in her seat, then registered the compliment and beamed at Uma. "Oh, thanks!"

"Is that, like, a rose petal perfume, and a berry-scented shampoo?"

"Yes, exactly!"

"It's nice. Gotta love the twenty-first century."

Audrey's face felt hot again as a woman in an apron sat two plates and two drinks in front of Harry and Gil. Uma spread a napkin in front of herself and accepted all of Gil's fries (and two of Harry's onion rings, seemingly just because Harry wanted to give her something, too). She ate with both elbows on the table and even slid all of her bangles off to better get at the food. Her scales were exposed, under the sunlight from the window and the synthetic light overhead. Greenish, with different hues of blue and brown. They suited her. It was a shame she hid them.

"Maleficent really doesn't tell me _anything,"_ she griped.

"Well, it's not like you tell her anything, either," Audrey pointed out.

Uma snorted. "I tell her things. They're called lies."

"Good lies, though," Gil commented.

"Top tier lies," Harry agreed.

Uma grinned, as though flattered, then changed the subject. "So, it seems like you've settled down." She nodded her head at the pink convertible right outside the window. "That yours?"

"Yes," Audrey said proudly. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess." Uma looked over at Harry, and they both smirked.

Audrey crossed her arms. "What exactly is so funny?"

"Dree, it's a pink convertible, and you have a million bumper stickers. You have a 'Jesus is my Co-Pilot', you have a 'Coexist'..."

"...three about shopping, and a Betty Boop," Harry tacked on.

"You have a personalized license plate holder that says 'Audrey Rose'..."

"...in _pink_," the two of them finished in unison.

"Also a pink steering wheel cover that looks really soft," Gil contributed, a bit late. Uma and Harry had had centuries to develop a rhythm, and he had only had decades to weave himself into it. Still, Uma nodded at his point, and Harry dipped his head at him in agreement.

Audrey shrugged, with her arms still crossed. "So I have a strong aesthetic. Sue me."

They fell into a comfortable silence. Audrey got a refill on her milkshake and miracled a bird away from her car. Harry paid for a few songs on the table's mini jukebox. Gil sketched a pair of lips on a napkin with an ink pen from his vest pocket. And Uma pulled out her phone and started reading something; probably some current events article, if her focused frown was any indication. Audrey found that her gaze kept returning to Uma, with her long, blue braids spilling around her shoulders, her eyes focused on her phone screen, one hand periodically reaching for fries while the other held the phone (with the occasional flick of the thumb to scroll).

She forced herself to stop staring by making brief conversation with Gil, complimenting his drawing (which _was_ very good, for a lunchtime sketch) and seeing his delighted smile at her praise. But eventually she was back to quietly sipping her milkshake and watching Uma read. She wanted to ask what she was reading but didn't want to break her concentration.

Harry's last song ended. He nudged Uma lightly and asked, "Any requests?"

She blinked, and rather than look up at him, her eyes promptly met Audrey's, catching her in the act of staring; Audrey winced. "What?" Uma asked.

"I have a flower shop now," Audrey found herself informing them all.

"Really." Uma cocked her head appreciatively. "That's why you went with 'Audrey Rose'?"

"Yes." Audrey swirled her straw around in her cup. "It's nice to grow things. It feels nice. I've had the shop for about five years now."

Uma seemed to count it back for a second. "Did you start it before or after we last met?"

"A few months before." Audrey paused, and hummed in appreciation as Harry started up a new song. This was a good one. "I didn't want to tell you about it, in case I gave up on it. But it turns out I love what I do."

"Well, I'm happy for you."

"Do _you_ have a job?" The question was a formality; she expected an eye roll at least and active ridicule at most. Instead, she got perhaps the most _and_ least informative answer she could ever have expected:

"Um..." Uma trailed off evasively and ate a fry. "Yeah, you could say that."

Audrey boggled. "What, really?"

"Don't get all excited," Uma said, rolling her eyes. "I just, uh...It's not really a job. My apartment is kind of the base of operations for a kind of...anti-homelessness...club?"

Audrey raised her eyebrows, wondering with some dread what "anti-homelessness club" could mean in Uma's world.

"At first, we were just letting a couple of homeless teens crash in our apartment while we were out of town," Uma explained. "Then things snowballed, and now we actually hold meetings and do excursions."

"Excursions?" Audrey repeated warily.

"You would call it vandalism."

Audrey dropped her forehead to her palm.

"Well," Gil said, "it's not fair how they have those armrests on the benches just so the homeless can't sleep on 'em. So we break those off."

"And the spikes," Harry chimed in.

"Break?" Audrey echoed, still with her head down. "You can't just miracle them off?"

"Oh, yeah; that would look _great_ on my report," Uma snarked. "Anyway, our club members have a lot of pent-up rage. Attacking the benches gives them an outlet for all that aggression."

"Just don't accidentally make them immortal, too, please," Audrey sighed, then slowly lifted her head.

Uma, Harry, and Gil were exchanging looks. Harry ducked his head evasively and started another song.

"What?" Audrey demanded.

"I did accidentally make Jonas bullet-proof once," Uma confessed. "The cops shouldn't have opened fire in the first place. Anyway, you _can't_ say what I'm doing is _wrong_."

Audrey sighed hard, because Uma was right; she couldn't entirely condemn her. How Audrey detested moral grayness. She finished off the last of her second milkshake, and Uma finished off her fries. The boys had been done eating for several minutes, now, and were mopping at their mouths with napkins. Harry, noticing that Gil had missed a spot, lunged gracefully across the table to swipe at a mayonnaise streak on Gil's cheek with Harry's own napkin. Gil grinned gratefully.

"I don't know about the joint custody idea," Uma said, into the silence. "How would it even work?"

"You take one, I take one?" Audrey suggested. "Or each of us takes both for alternating weeks or months? I don't know; it was just an idea. I figure it could throw them off the scent, and that way the demons can't say that you're attached to them, so they won't attack them to hurt or offend you."

Uma growled at the thought. "We can make that a last resort," she said, rising and putting her sunglasses back on. Harry stood to let her out of the booth. "Text me the address to your flower shop, I'll text you my apartment number. Other than that...see you here in five years?"

Audrey smiled. Most of her lipgloss had been left behind on her milkshake straw, but she could feel that there was still enough left to be visible. "See you here in five years." Yes, barring any disasters or happy coincidences.

Gil kissed Audrey on the cheek before leaving his seat, Uma paid for their meals, and the three of them left the diner.

Audrey watched through the window as Uma miracled the car back together. She smiled as Uma clearly denied when Harry asked if he could drive again. She felt a sort of pang as they climbed into their seats, with Gil driving and Uma on the passenger side and Harry in the back. There was room for her, if she ran out right now. But what would be the point of that? What angelic deeds did she hope to accomplish?

The car started; its exterior lights came on, and the ignition sound was audible through the glass. Audrey balled her hands up in her lap and ordered another milkshake.

Why was this place always so empty? How was it still afloat, as a business, after all these years?

Had they miracled it immortal, too, by accident?

Audrey watched the dwindling form of Uma's stolen car until there was nothing left to watch. Then she cast her eyes around, going for her phone and then noticing that Gil had left his drawing behind.

Had that been deliberate? Was it for her?

Or maybe he just hadn't chosen to carry a lightly-decorated diner napkin around with him.

Still, she folded it in half and slipped it into her pocket.

She had to force herself to sit still; even now she felt the ridiculous urge to get in her car and chase them down, even though there was nothing in particular to say or do. She just...missed them.

The dent Gil had made in the cushioned seat beside her was already gone; the oil-stained napkin from which Uma had eaten her greasy food had been taken up by the waitress when Audrey ordered her most recent milkshake (which now arrived). Harry's last song had long stopped playing.

Oh, none of this wistful business. Audrey sucked down the entirety of her milkshake all at once, slapped an extremely generous tip onto the tabletop, and briskly exited the diner. Time to go to her shop, where she was never lonely. Her flowers reminded her of the Garden of Eden, and they were so responsive to her care, more like pets than plants, at times.

She climbed into her car, and she thought of Harry and Uma's teasing over the color. Drove off, and she thought of Gil's remark that her steering wheel cover looked soft. It was soft. She should have offered to let them feel it.

Oh, gracious, what kept drawing her thoughts to them, anyway? It could not be loneliness, because angels did not _get_ lonely; there is no such thing as "lonely", when one is filled with a righteous purpose.

She pulled up to a stop light.

But then...maybe they were a part of her righteous purpose. That would explain things, right?

She was waiting for the light to turn green as it dawned on her.

Maybe everything, all along, had been a sign. That was why Uma had seemed so multi-dimensional and intriguing all along; that was why she had kept such troublesome but loving boys in her company; that was why Audrey enjoyed and...well, craved was too strong a word...enjoyed and _looked forward to_ their get-togethers.

Maybe her joke about evangelizing Harry and Gil wasn't too far off the mark.

Maybe she was supposed to Save all three of them.

~~

"How about 'Chad'?" Evie suggested, while blowing Carlos's nails dry. She had painted them black, and it was a good look for him. They had made the rich guy's entertainment room their own; they'd looted his snacks, sprawled out in the cushy seats, and War had an action movie playing on the huge screen (though he'd conceded to keeping the volume lower than he'd wanted it, so they could talk. Death did not like noise.).

"Ew," Mal said, while War scoffed:

"That's an angel name."

"_No_, gross; what angel would be named Chad?"

"One of the sorters; I saw him on a battlefield on the way here. He was paired with this little demon girl, Dizzy." 

"Is _every_ demon a little girl?" Mal rolled her eyes.

"It was pretty hilarious to watch."

"Why?" Evie asked.

"Because they were both so bad at arguing their point."

"Anyway, I already have a 'C' name," Carlos said, throwing a handful of potato chips at War and making a huge mess. "Get your own letter."

"Maybe a 'B'," Evie mused. "Or a 'Q'. Or a 'W', if you want to be totally obvious. How does Bartholomew sound?"

War appeared to be too busy leering at an onscreen explosion to answer.

"He looks more like a 'J'," Mal opined.

"Like, the letter, or the name?" Carlos asked, with his mouth full.

"Is Jay a name?" War asked absentmindedly.

"It's more of a nickname," Evie protested, clearly hoping to get them back to her list of names.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's a name," Carlos insisted. "I've ruined a lot of neighborhoods in my time, and I've heard people calling each other Jay."

"As a nickname," Evie insisted.

"Jay is fine," War said, furrowing his brow a little. "I like it."

Evie sulked but did not argue further. "Okay. Jay it is. It suits you."

"I like it," War said, with more conviction. Then he threw a charming smile over his shoulder. "Thanks, Mal. Carlos."

Now Evie actually huffed, and Jay chuckled and took her hand. "...and Evie. Thank you."

And Jay's smile. He always had a light in his eyes that promised...well, adventure, but more than that. The feeling he inspired...it was similar to Evie- the need for more -but while, with Evie, it manifested as a passive need, hunger pangs on the emotional plane, sad longing like the back end of heartbreak, with Jay it was active, the need to conquer, to claim, as though something had just been snatched from your hands and it now lived at his very core. There was a reason people willingly went to war.

There was a reason Jay was the only one of them who Mal was _certain_ was not a virgin.

Yes, Death still had her v-card. Was anyone shocked?

"Can you paint my toes, too?" Carlos asked.

"Look who's getting into mani-petis," Mal said, while Evie hoisted Carlos's left foot into her lap.

"I've noticed there's a fine line between what counts as decoration and what counts as pollution," Carlos replied unabashedly. "It's like the whole 'biodegradable' thing I was telling you about..." (Mal groaned good-naturedly.) "What seems to be litter might not actually be there to harm. It might be there to feed, or improve. There's all these weird distinctions."

"The invention of vaccines really screwed with your head, didn't it?" Mal patted his knee.

Conversation subsided; they watched the movie for a while. It was weird for Mal to see deadly things happening but not _feel_ them. Not entirely unpleasant, but weird. A little bothersome, like knowing that she should be doing something but finding herself unable...

"Anyone seen No Name lately?" she asked.

"The demon?" Carlos asked.

"She hasn't taken part in an official 'war' since World War II," Jay said. "Just human rights skirmishes, stuff like that. I think she's been trying to keep a low profile, hoping I'd forget about how she stole Gilbert Legume."

"Jay," Evie chided, "just because she got in the way of his father's plans to send him to war doesn't mean she stole him."

"I mean, she's been stealing from _me_ for centuries," Mal said.

"Harry Hook." Evie nodded. "You might have mentioned that once or twice." She winked at Mal, who was not distracted by the friendly teasing.

"It's _annoying_. Humans aren't supposed to live that long."

Evie rubbed Mal's back consolingly for a few seconds before commenting, "They've been acting against hunger, too. Feeding the homeless."

"Doesn't that bother you?" Mal asked.

"Honestly, I've always preferred afflicting the rich, anyway," Evie imparted pensively. "There's no sport to starving the poor. War and I...I mean _Jay_ and I actually had a great conversation about that, seventy-ish years ago. What was it you said, Jay?"

"Starving the poor is like children at war," Jay said. "No fun."

"Right." Evie giggled. "I liked it, because it was true and it rhymed."

"Except the 'no fun' part," Jay said.

"I don't get it," Mal deadpanned.

"Weakening the already-week is no fun," Jay rephrased, with a frank shrug.

Mal still didn't get it, but then, she was Death. No one felt particularly off-limits to her; there were the alive and the dead. Well, the alive, the dead, and those who _ought_ to have been dead _centuries_ ago.

Carlos stared at his fingernails and mused aloud, "Are we going soft?"

There was half a second of silence to register and understand the question. Then:

"No!" the other three chorused adamantly.

"What kind of a question is that?" Mal snapped.

"I mean, think about it." Carlos looked at all of them in turn. "If the message came _now_ that it was time to ride, time to end the Earth, would you be ready?"

"Of course," Mal said, but Jay's and Evie's simultaneous "Yeah"s were not convincing in the slightest. She whipped around to stare at each of them, in shock, and they withered under her gaze.

"I know I'd miss chocolate," Carlos said, unabashedly. "And little kids drawing on their driveways in chalk. And confetti. Jay, wouldn't you miss football games?"

"American football or other football?"

"Either one."

Jay made a vague gesture with his head, a sort of nod disguised as just looking around. Like he was trying to hide his agreement.

"Evie. Fashion shows?"

Evie stared raptly at her knees. Again, not dissent, but discomfort.

"We're the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," Mal said sternly. Jay and Evie wouldn't look at her, but Carlos did. He looked skeptical. "However much fun we _think_ we're having, it's nothing compared to the end of the world! Jay, you're the one who said you miss swords. You're gonna get a sword, a _flaming_ sword!"

Jay nodded more distinctly, seeming encouraged by the reminder.

"E, your scales? You like balance so much, you'll have a blast with those."

"Of course I will," Evie said, putting on her deadliest smile.

Mal's shoulders relaxed. She even let out a little laugh. "I'll miss strawberries for maybe a little while, sure, but Armageddon? It's what we've all been waiting for." She looked at the last of her horsemen. "Carlos?"

He was back to staring at his fingernails, although there was a certain added color to his cheeks, now. Losing the support of the others so quickly had probably been disappointing. But he had to remember the truth, for his own good. "Just a thought," he said, taciturn. He stood before Mal could say anything more. Evie looked concerned. "I'm gonna go empty all the bathroom garbage cans on the kitchen floor."

Mal frowned at his back as he went.

~~

Uma tried to focus on her reading, but a pleasurable hiss slipped out of her as Harry caressed the scales on her neck with the gossamer touch of his knuckles. She shot him a halfhearted glare but didn't tell him to stop, and he moved his hand away only to lay a kiss in the same spot.

_This_ kind of physical intimacy was something that had taken them centuries of friendship to get around to; she still was not physically intimate with Gil the way she was with Harry, although Harry and Gil had just finished "getting it on" less than an hour ago, which was why Gil was asleep now, snoring on his end of the bed. She and Gil kissed and spooned, but not much more. He wasn't even all the way outside of a human's normal lifespan; it didn't seem ethical.

Harry trailed kisses down to her shoulder and stopped there.

She could hear the microwave running, elsewhere in the apartment; Desiree was probably making pizza rolls.

She set aside her reading. "Alright," she said, running a hand through Harry's hair and making him sink his full weight into his pillow. "You've got my attention."

"You honor me," Harry said, twisting one of her braids around his finger.

She lay down beside him, their noses almost touching. She had no intention of going all the way tonight; like food, sex was a human fascination that she only sought out when the mood struck her, which was not nearly as often as the mood struck some humans.

"It was nice to see Audrey today," she whispered.

"Aye," Harry agreed, but allowed her to set the pace of the conversation. Audrey was a bit of a sensitive topic. Uma had misread their relationship once before, calling them friends and being quite unceremoniously rejected, and she was not interested in experiencing the same thing again. She would not beg for anyone's love. Not ever.

"It's a good thing she told us about the new sorting policies. Now I know to be on the look-out."

Harry clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Always thinking about protecting us."

"Well, I'm not letting any other demon lay a claw, paw, or tentacle on you."

"If the horn hag struck me down now, I'd still have lived a thousand lives with you," Harry said. "A thousand adventures."

He said these things to relax her, but they never did; it bothered her, how content he sounded. Made her wonder if she should ask, again, if he wanted to age. Wanted to...go. It was past time, by human standards. She would survive it.

Or enough of her would, anyway.

But if it was what he wanted, then she would put an end to the miracle. If he asked.

But he wasn't. Hadn't.

"You're getting lost in your fears," Harry breathed. "I'm here. Gil's here. You're here."

She brushed her lips against his, then rolled onto her back. "Gonna keep it that way."

Harry chuckled and laid his face on her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE COMMENT what you liked, what you disliked, what you wonder, what you hope. I'd love to know what you guys are thinking!


	3. Networking on Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I hope this chapter didn't come out too terrible. I was hoping to include more plot points, but it was getting long and late.
> 
> I _have_ substantially changed one Descendants character's age, relative to the other characters. You'll see him in this chapter.

Audrey was twirling around her flower shop, humming to herself and spritzing her plants as she went, when she suddenly heard the bell over the front door chime.

She froze, smoothed out her skirt, and called out, "Who's there?"

It wasn't Valentine's Day, and prom season had passed. Maybe someone was having a wedding? Or wedding anniversary? Or piano recital? Audrey wracked her mind for a reason to give for not relinquishing any of her babies; maybe say all of the leaves had worms? That had been her go-to for a while, though; if she kept using it, at some point someone was going to investigate the sanitary conditions here.

"It's Ben," a voice called out, and Audrey relaxed and peeked around the nearest row of plants to see the young man who had just entered. Beastiel's son, the one who worked in sorting. She had known him in Heaven, in her youth. They had been friends. He was dressed in all white; Audrey remembered, somewhat wistfully, when that had been her. But she wasn't getting guilty over fabric anymore; she had matured past _that_, at least.

"Hey, Ben," she greeted cheerfully, skittering over and embracing him.

"Oh," Ben chuckled nervously, and Audrey felt her cheeks warm as she withdrew:

"Humans do this a lot. It's a gesture of affection."

"They create the most interesting things," Ben commented, smiling. He put Audrey at ease with his easy acceptance of unfamiliar ideas; she could never have hugged Beastiel. She felt a rush of gladness, that he was in sorting. The humans were in good hands. "Is it like...a way to communicate the same level of affection as intercourse, but without the vulnerability, risk, or societal weight that actual intercourse involves?"

Audrey let out a startled laugh; she had grown somewhat accustomed to human taboos, which made talking to other angels a real hoot sometimes. "Basically," she affirmed. "Here, sit down. Can I get you anything?"

"Like...what?" Ben asked, obediently seating himself in the indicated chair.

"Oh." Another slip. Ben just didn't inspire guardedness, did he? "When humans welcome other humans into their homes, they often offer them a light food or beverage. Sorry about that."

"Don't be. You really know a lot about them." Also unlike his father, Ben didn't have a disapproving look in his eyes when he said it; he looked impressed.

"Well, I should; I've been here for thousands of years," Audrey teased.

"Don't sell yourself short. I've been in Heaven for thousands of years, and yet I haven't the _faintest_ idea what's going on there." Ben's tone had gone suddenly rough with frustration.

"What do you mean?" Audrey hedged.

They locked eyes for a moment. It seemed as though Ben was deciding how much he was willing to say, which was surprising; when last Audrey had seen him, he'd been a paragon of trust. Finally, he replied, "Did you know that the children of demons are also demons?"

Audrey frowned, not fully understanding the question and requiring a few seconds to adjust to him having asked it at all. "I...didn't. I didn't know that demons even..." She cleared her throat. Apparently, human taboos were catching. "I didn't know demons reproduced."

Every angel she knew or knew of had been Made, not birthed; Beastiel, for example, hadn't copulated to produce a son, he had asked the Almighty for one. That was how Fairiel had gotten Jane, too, and how Audrey's mother had gotten her. Likewise, every demon she knew had Fallen from Heaven, not...

"They do. Or at least, they give birth; I doubt they have intercourse. And their children never get a chance to be angels or Fall; they're just demons by birth."

Now she was beginning to understand the problem. "_Oh._"

"I informed my father; apparently he already knew." Ben's volume was increasing with his agitation. "How could he already know, and yet do nothing?"

"It...doesn't sound terribly fair, does it?" Audrey said carefully. She, for one, was _not_ surprised about Beastiel's lack of concern for the children of demons, but what exactly could be done about that? Humans, the children of the Lord, _they_ were her job, and Ben's. Short of storming Downstairs with a large sack, stuffing demon children into it, and running away, what were they to do without Beastiel's involvement?

"It's worse than unfair. It's...Audrey, it seems _Bad_."

Audrey froze, then swallowed. "You don't...mean that, do you?"

He looked her in the eyes for a minute, then buried his face in his hands and unconvincingly said, "No, I guess I don't."

"Hey." Audrey gracefully descended into the chair beside his and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll figure it out; we'll fix it. Or someone will, at least. Who else have you spoken to about this?"

"Just you. Well, I discussed it a bit with Death and the little demon girl I'm paired with."

"Oh, you're _paired_ with a young one? One who didn't Fall?"

"Her name is Celia. And she...She's just a child. She's curious, and...she's smart, but not 'wily', or whatever we say about demons. She's young. And...she should have gotten a chance."

It occurred to Audrey to wonder if Uma knew about all of this. If not, her storm-Downstairs-with-a-sack idea might become less hypothetical and hyperbolic when Uma did find out. Oh, dear, the trouble Uma might get herself into over something like this...If she didn't know yet, she could _not_ find out.

"We're supposed to do what is Good," Ben said, in a tone of voice as though he was slowly working something out. "Maybe what is Good isn't always what is normal."

"Um..." Audrey shifted uncomfortably. "I know you're probably worried about those kids, but...you do remember what happened last time angels went against the grain, don't you?"

"The Lord gave us all free will. The ones who Fell misused theirs; they fell short of Goodness. I don't think I will be doing that."

Audrey thought of Uma. And of Ben. They would get along very well, she imagined. "What are you going to do, then?" she asked quietly. His determined tone really was scaring her.

Ben stood, tall but burdened. "I'm going to go to work," he replied simply. "I'm being called to a soul now. It's been nice talking to you."

"Nice talking to you, too." Her voice was practically at a whisper as her old friend departed.

~~

When Harry awoke, it was because he noticed that he was cold and uncomfortable. All of the thin bedsheets were gathered around him and bunched up between his legs. Uma's side of the bed was empty, which was never a happy sight. Gil's side of the bed was also empty, but he had left a note on his pillow that read 'we're going swimming' in French; he favored English or Spanish to speak, now that they spent most of their time in America, but wrote in French more often than not.

The fact that they had gone off without him was probably because Uma was expecting a visit from Maleficent sometime soon; she didn't like to be with both of them when Maleficent showed up, because it was easier for the demoness to assume that they were different humans each time if they weren't always together. It was, in fact, most likely that Uma had meant to go swimming alone, to wait for Maleficent, and Gil had happened to awaken while she was getting ready to leave. 

Harry smiled at the fact that even when Uma initially intended to be alone, she couldn't say no to Gil's company. _Sometimes_ she could, on rare occasions when she actually wanted solitude for its own sake and not for pragmatic reasons. But that was uncommon.

Gil had a bright, enthusiastic presence that had enthralled both of them even after centuries of well-enjoyed two-ness.

Someone banged on the bedroom door, disrupting Harry's train of thought. "What?" he barked out impatiently. (After having lived so long, it really was a miracle that he still felt like himself; he still had his energy and his temper.)

There was a moment of quiet shuffling outside. Then: "Is Uma in there?" Gonzo asked.

Harry smirked. That question meant they were about to ask for money. They _had_ money, especially Jonas (who was economical about everything he did), and the oldest ones were steadily gaining more (as it was easier for them to find and keep jobs, now that they were no longer homeless), but they preferred to ask Uma before spending any of their own. Fair enough, since Uma didn't need to eat and had the means to provide for them, whether it was with miracle money or with the funds she'd accrued from all the odd jobs they'd taken in the past. "No, she's gone swimming."

"We're out of frozen waffles," Desiree's voice chimed in.

Harry sighed, climbed out of bed, and began to get dressed. Clothing _had_ changed, over the centuries; it had gotten more complicated, and then less complicated almost all at once. He enjoyed the simplicity of what was currently in vogue, because it was easier for them to just up and _go_ somewhere when only shirts and trousers were really expected of them. Still, he loved layering, when it was convenient to do so. He liked jackets, and vests. He liked the way they looked, and he had gotten used to the weight of lots of clothes on his body in nearly the same way he had gotten used to Uma weighing down the other side of the bed, and then _Gil_ and Uma weighing down _either_ side of the bed; it felt vaguely as though he might fly away, without them to anchor him.

"We're also out of French toast sticks," Gonzo chimed in.

"Whose fault is that?" he asked rhetorically, even as he was pulling a few dollar bills out of the drawer where they kept them.

"The only breakfast food we have left is toaster strudel," Desiree continued. "And that stuff is gross."

"_I'm_ eating the toaster strudel," Jonas said, in a pompous tone that nearly made Harry laugh aloud, "because _I_ appreciate everything that-"

The end of his sentence was drowned out by the others' mocking.

Harry opened the door just a crack and dispensed the grocery money through it, keeping his face hidden because he hadn't applied his eyeliner yet, and he felt naked without it. Then he closed the door and listened to the rhythmless percussion of several pairs of feet hustling away, into the living room. He had no idea whom he'd handed the money to, but evidently it hadn't been Jonas, as now a muffled argument was taking place in which Jonas was reminding _someone_ that he was the one who was always in charge of the grocery money.

Other humans' ability to make Harry laugh also hadn't dwindled over the years. It was amazing how not-bored he was with the world. Living long was actually wonderful. Traveling to all of the same places but finding that they were actually quite new, every time. Experiencing each new revelation of science and gaining bragging rights whenever he believed a theory before it became popular (though sometimes it was because Uma simply informed him that it was true). He had seen plays and cuts of film that were now lost to time. Flash-in-the-pan fads forgotten by history. And also the recorded things, the wars and upheavals. Revolutions! Those were a blast.

Uma had once said that it seemed like he was _made_ for revolutions.

He had responded, "I think I was made for you."

And she had upturned her gaze, as though she could peer Upstairs and inquire about the machinations of the universe. All while running her fingers through his hair.

Harry raised his hand to his own head to imitate the movement. He looked all tousled, this morning, which was how he liked to look.

Plucking the eyeliner pen from the dresser, Harry leaned in close to the mirror and did his best to imitate the way kohl had looked around his eyes, before they had stopped buying it, out of convenience. He missed it, from time to time. There were loads of things he sometimes missed, and almost all of them were purely aesthetical. Although some things ran deeper. He missed the Scotland of his youth, for instance, every now and then. Like every place, Scotland was new every time they visited, and they visited often. (Uma joked that he just wanted to maintain his accent.) The newness was exciting, but occasionally he felt it in himself to mourn the old.

Uma always seemed to pick up on it when he had those kinds of thoughts. They were quite in-tune, by now, so while she didn't miss kohl or Scotland quite as much as he did, and while he was familiar enough with human lifespans that he wasn't blindsided by loss nearly as often as she was (It seemed every time they found out that a favorite local musician or shop owner had passed on, she said an appalled, "Already?" And Harry would respond, "Love, it's been seventy years since we last saw them."), still they tended to sympathize and commiserate with each other on those things. Likewise, they had both been there for Gil when they'd learned of his father's death, and-

In the mirror's reflection, he saw that he was no longer alone.

He ignored the new arrival, though, in favor of continuing to apply his eyeliner.

After a minute, the entity spoke up: "Fancy that. No Name left you all by yourself? And here I thought she was so _fond_ of you."

He ignored her. He was protected from Death, whether Uma was here or not; miracles weren't affected by physical distance, not in that way at least. And he wouldn't speak to anyone who wouldn't use Uma's name.

"You're _ignoring_ me, human?" Death demanded, storming up to him and standing at his shoulder to seethe.

Harry hummed an old song to himself, finishing his left eye to his satisfaction and moving on to his right.

"You won't always be protected, you know. Accidents happen all the time. Even if she can protect you from whatever happens to _you_, she can't protect you from whatever happens to _her_."

Harry froze and turned a glare on Death, firstly for the brazen implication that something might happen to Uma, and secondly for the callous assumption that the idea of something happening to Uma should upset him because of his _self-preservation_, rather than because of his love for her. "Get out. Y'know you can't take me."

Death shrugged. "Just because I can't _end_ your life yet doesn't mean I can't make it worse."

Harry went back to ignoring her, as he perfected the dark lining of his right eye and tamped down the anxiety that had risen within him at the thought of harm coming to Uma. She had told him what discorporation meant, back in the earliest months of their friendship: that she would seem to go away, but she wouldn't _really_ be dead, just bodiless. Knowing the technicalities didn't make it less unpleasant to think about. 

And then there were the things that _could_ actually kill her.

He was reasonably sure that he, Gil, and Uma all feared holy water equally.

In fact, when they had first heard the song "Africa" (which contained the lyric _"I bless the rains down in Africa"_), sometime in the 1980s, it had caused Gil more distress than either of them had ever seen in him, as he worriedly asked if that could really happen, if someone could actually bless the rain and turn it to holy water, and even after Uma had answered that she was pretty sure that was impossible, he hadn't fully calmed down until they'd gone out and bought an umbrella.

"Maleficent hates her, you know," Death said suddenly. Apparently, she had caught on to the fact that his own mortality wasn't what bothered Harry. "She's really on borrowed time; demons as unpopular as she is don't tend to last long." He didn't look, but he could hear that she was smiling as she continued, "But you're such a _brave_ human; maybe you'll take on Maleficent yourself."

He would. Without a doubt, he would, if it came to that. If the demoness tried to harm Uma, he would fight her. He would lose, most likely; Uma had been very blunt in repeatedly reminding him that a human could not take on Maleficent and he should just keep out of the way, keep himself safe, protect Gil and let Gil protect him. Uma liked to coach them through all the situations in which they should abandon her and save themselves. Just last night, she had made them memorize the address of Audrey's flower shop so they could run to her, if need be.

But if he saw Maleficent trying to harm Uma, he wouldn't be thinking about contingency plans. He would be thinking about how much damage he could do before the demoness burned him to a crisp.

"Giving you humans such blind courage was the Maker's greatest gift to me," Death opined.

Harry pretended he didn't hear, as he waited for her to go away.

~~

"Is _every_ demon a little girl?" The angel who asked this was not Ben; he was roughly Ben's size, but his hair was composed of yellow curls, and his expression, as he looked at Celia, was bewildered almost to the point of looking offended. This angel was paired with Dizzy; there were _two_ middle-of-the-road humans to be sorted here (literally middle-of-the-road, as this was a car crash), so two angel-demon sorting pairs were required.

"Hey, Chad," Ben greeted, then actually turned to Dizzy. "Hi there. What's your name?"

Dizzy shot Celia a confused look, the former's mouse tail making an uneasy swishing motion behind her. Celia merely shrugged, unable to explain her partner's friendliness to her only friend from home. "I'm Dizzy."

"Nice to meet you."

"Ben." Chad looked even more bewildered. He gestured at his fellow angel as if to say, _What are you doing?_

Ben's pacific expression did not change, and a part of Celia admired that; when other demons gave _her_ that look, she was never so confident. She was always managing her level of nastiness, trying to hit that sweet spot where she was abrasive enough that they wouldn't say that she was too human, or worse, _angelic_, but not so abrasive that she came across as questioning authority. Either extreme would make the others of her kind want to put her in her place, and her father only provided so much protection. "So, should we start sorting?" Ben changed the subject.

"I've already started," Celia said, gloatingly holding up the soul, "and this one _has_ to be one of mine."

The conversation went roughly the same as the ones before; Celia haggling for the soul, pointing out every sin she could find. This time had to be the worst, though. She had never been so torn. Dizzy was right there, and Celia wanted to impress her, since Dizzy had always said she admired Celia's way with words. She had gotten them out of trouble _how_ many times, with her silver tongue? Yet convincing Ben of a human's evil nature was different from convincing some older demon not to murder them for being where they weren't supposed to be. Ben was weirdly patient, with too-understanding eyes, and when he tried to talk her around to his perspective, she found herself agreeing with him. When she managed not to _show_ that she agreed, he just kept explaining, like he refused to give up on the human. And like he refused to give up on her.

It was dumb.

He was so dumb.

It was a softness that no one could afford, Downstairs, and she was honestly shocked that angels could afford it either (and maybe they couldn't, based on Chad), and yet Celia found a few rogue factions of herself wanting to earn more of it, to see where it went. When she did something to impress the older demons, rare though that was, the most she could hope for was a bland, approving word or, if it was her father, a pat on the back or affectionate grip on the shoulder. Ben smiled even when he _disapproved_; what happened if she said or did stuff that he _liked?_

That was also dumb, and proof that angels were more dangerous than they seemed.

Still, Ben ended up winning this soul.

She was kind of glad that Dizzy was having a hard time, too.

"Um, I think..." Dizzy trailed off, staring into the soul for several seconds, as though completely stumped. "It's probably, uh...This one has a lot of pride, right?" She turned to Celia. "This is hard; souls are so pretty!"

Celia was nodding in agreement before she caught herself. Everything here was so much nicer than everything Downstairs. She had been ready to hate humans, to really tear into them, as soon as she'd first arrived and seen all the colors and light, the beauty of a world that had the Lord's favor, but then she'd seen the souls themselves, light and darkness and, most of all, color, and she'd thought, _Maybe they really just deserve this place. And maybe we really just don't._ And Ben's whole seeing-the-good-in-them thing was _not_ helping.

"Just give me the stupid soul," Chad grumbled, though the vaguely disgusted way he reached for the thing itself suggested to Celia that he didn't really want it. Now that, _that_ was how she'd expected angels to act; this Chad guy had it down. What was Ben's deal?

"'Stupid', Chad?" Ben chided.

"Come on," Chad defended, "they're like..._wet._"

"They're not wet," Dizzy said. "They're just squishy."

"You know, angels have souls, too," Ben reminded Chad.

"Our souls aren't wet," Chad grumbled.

"How do you know?"

Chad didn't answer. It was rather clear that he _didn't_ know whether angel souls felt like human souls, and that the idea perturbed him.

Dizzy leaned in close to Celia and whispered, "Want to go eat, before our next job?"

Celia grinned and nodded. That was one advantage to losing: that she didn't have to go back Downstairs to drop off the soul. Food was great. Tastes were great here. Downstairs, if you saw a substance of pretty much any kind, the first reflex was _Don't let that get in your mouth._ Here, people _put_ things in their mouths, willingly and often. And they were right to. Celia would take her appreciation for the beauty of human souls and her desire for others' approval to the grave, but she wouldn't deny her love for human food if Maleficent herself asked about it.

That was a lie. Yes she would. Maleficent was scary.

~~

Gil knew that he would never get over how lucky he was to be one of the few people allowed to see Uma's scales.

They were turquoise remnants of her snake form (which he was also privileged to sometimes get to see), and they were on her wrists, neck, down her spine, and along parts of her thighs and hips. They were beautiful and smooth to the touch, and whenever he ran his fingers over them, Uma became, not tense (or at least, not tense in the _negative_ way), but very watchful. Her eyes were dark and deep; the first time he'd seen her, in a cafe in France, he'd thought that he had never seen eyes so dark and so deep. He would be more than willing to spend forever caught in her gaze, but he was sure she had better things to look at than him.

Anyway, Gil had found that it was equally flattering when Uma looked at him and when she didn't: when she did, it meant that he had her attention; when she didn't, it meant that he had her trust. 

Things she didn't trust, like Maleficent or bad humans, stayed in her field of vision at all times.

With Gil, in this pond they had found (almost entirely concealed by greenery and miracled clean), she floated on her back and stared at the sky. "I'm glad you found this place," she mused.

Right, technically _he_ had found it. But they had been with him at the time. He was just observant.

"It's nice here."

"Yeah," Gil agreed, watching her glide at a lethargic pace across the water's surface. "And people can't get here without rustling a lot of leaves, so we won't be surprised." Except by Maleficent, who wouldn't need to walk. That was the understanding. But Uma would sense it, when Maleficent showed up.

Uma stopped floating and returned to an upright position, facing Gil. She didn't say anything, but the expression on her face was inherently magnetic; Gil moved closer, as though reeled in, until they were mere centimeters apart.

Then he splashed her.

Indignant shock flashed across Uma's face, but she cackled and splashed him back.

Gil dragged his hand through the water to make the biggest wave he could; meanwhile, Uma more or less tackled him, and they both went under, laughing until the water went in their mouths and noses. As his head submerged, Gil listened to the pond gurgling around him and remembered that Uma had once said she'd chosen her name because it was how everything sounded underwater. He could see what she meant; he could imagine that the water around him was saying "Uma, Uma, Uma, Uma..."

They both surfaced. Gil spat out water and caught his breath so he could resume his splashing onslaught on Uma, who barely held up her arms to defend herself in-between retaliating strikes. Contrary to what anyone would expect, looking at the two of them, Uma had seen more battles and skirmishes than he ever had, and she could pretty much destroy him if she wanted to, but she didn't and wouldn't. For some reason, knowing that made this all the more fun for Gil. The battle lasted another quarter-minute before both of them subsided and enjoyed the simple, silent pleasure of being soaked in pond water together.

It reminded him of his first time swimming in the English Channel with Harry and Uma. In hindsight, he had spent more of that time babbling than actually playing in the water; he had been so excited to find that they actually liked listening to him, and so enamored with their indulgent smiles, and maybe also kind of nervous, because that swimming trip had taken place the same day he had resolved to ask if he could run away with them, and he had spent a surprisingly long time working up to it. Once he'd managed to ask, Uma and Harry had both looked flabbergasted for a full second, then asked if he was sure he wanted to join them, with all that he knew (and by that time, they had told him quite a bit), then exchanged a single pregnant glance with each other before enthusiastically accepting.

"I might let my wings out later," Uma remarked suddenly. "There's enough room here, and no one can see..." She turned to look at Gil, and chuckled at his delighted expression.

He loved her wings as much as he loved her scales and eyes and every other part of her, but he had only gotten to see them exactly three times.

They were as black as ink, composed of the softest feathers, and strong enough to lift her into the air, though he had never actually seen her fly.

Harry had told Gil, a couple of years ago, that Uma had actually been letting her wings out more often since meeting him. Apparently, _Harry_ had only seen her wings about four or five times in the centuries she'd known him, despite how consistent Harry was about saying that her wings were beautiful and that he loved them.

"What changed, then?" Gil had asked Harry, unsure how his own presence could have altered things, particularly for the _better_.

And Harry had smiled. He had eyes like hurricanes, even when his smile was soft, and especially when his smile was loving. "I think you made her see them differently. I never managed that in seven hundred years."

"But how, though?"

"I think it was when you said 'Falling was one choice; being a demon is a new choice all the time'."

And Gil had blushed, because that had been something he'd said before learning that _she_ was a Fallen angel, back when he'd thought they were just having a hypothetical conversation about religion at a nice cafe and he'd, in the course of that conversation, chosen to opine that maybe not every Fallen angel was necessarily a demon. And there was no doubt that Harry phrased the statement more eloquently than he had, despite the fact that they'd been having _this_ conversation in French as well and therefore there was no need to translate. "I wouldn't have..." He stammered and awkwardly stopped.

"Sure, you probably wouldn't say it now that you _know_," Harry agreed. "But it interested her. I think she used to believe that she was permanently stained by her Fall, and what you said changed that. Now, to her, Falling was one choice, and the wings are one consequence."

"They're beautiful."

"Aye, that too. It's up to her to see that, though."

Gil returned abruptly to the present when Uma suddenly said: "You littered on the way up here, right?"

She was still antsy about Maleficent, then.

"Yeah," he answered. What they called "littering" would not be considered as much by humans- since the things they dropped on the ground were usually money, or ink pens -but it sufficed for their purposes, as Maleficent didn't understand Earth well enough to observe a difference between throwing an empty chip bag on the ground and throwing five dollars in quarters on the ground, and detecting a small but recent "misdeed" on Gil's conscience (Uma had explained, with some difficulty, that it was similar to the way the sorters examined souls after death, but fainter, less detailed, and more subject to interpretation.) would help alleviate any suspicion that Uma was doing anything other than corrupting him. "I dropped two pencils on the sidewalk outside the apartment."

"Yeah, thanks for that," a new voice said. "Didn't love that you cleaned the pond, though."

Both Uma and Gil startled at the sudden appearance, which had gone completely unannounced by any crashing leaves or even footsteps. It was just...one second they were alone; the next there was gangly boy standing casually in the grass outside the pond. He looked about eighteen, with curly hair and a face dotted with freckles and smeared with what Gil suspected was ice cream. Despite his snarky words, he had a stoic, almost lethargic expression. Gil wondered, with some concern, if he was ill.

"Pestilence," Uma hissed warily, shifting position as though it were possible for her to hide Gil from view with her slighter body. Then her wings unfurled, in all their obsidian glory, perfectly contouring her shoulders and framing her head and neck, and Gil _was_ mostly concealed, but certainly too late.

Gil managed not to trail his fingers over the soft feathers; he doubted Uma wanted the distraction now.

"It's Pollution now," the boy said. "Well...it's Carlos."

"Nice name. What are you doing here?"

The boy who was actually one of the Horsemen of the apocalypse absentmindedly threw a food wrapper (which Gil hadn't noticed he was holding) over his shoulder and sat down at the water's edge, his shoes dangling partially into the pond. "First of all, I already saw the human, so you can put those away."

"No thank you."

Carlos raised his chin, as though to see better. "Is it the one you stole from Death, or the one you stole from War?"

A chill ran up Gil's spine at the question, but Uma merely said, "Death and War don't get to claim anyone. How'd Pestilence turn into Pollution, anyway?"

"They were always basically the same thing: a body corrupted by a contaminant. The change itself is actually a really involved subject, but I'm sure you don't really care. No one does." Gil felt a momentary kinship with the Horseman. He recognized that need to make levity out of other people's disinterest as something he himself had adopted with his own family, before Harry and Uma had shown him that people _could_ care what he thought about things. Carlos didn't pause for any assurances or denials, though; he breezily continued, "Likewise, I don't actually care about your stolen humans."

"Not stolen."

"Sure. I'm here to ask about the end of the world."

Uma's head tilted abruptly to the side. Were she human, Gil would have expected her neck to hurt afterward. "Isn't the end of the world kind of _your_ business?"

"Yes, but I have it on good authority that you're the one in charge of placing the Antichrist, so I'm here to ask you: Have you done it yet? Has the countdown started?"

Uma was very still. It was several seconds before she answered, "No. No one's even mentioned the Antichrist to me since before the Garden."

"I see."

"You're _dreading_ it, aren't you?" Her tone was still guarded, but there was intrigue, now. Gil guessed he understood why; it was pretty weird to think that one of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse was dreading the apocalypse, and if something in Carlos's expression or demeanor or line of questioning had indicated that to her, well then...

"I'm not the one collecting humans," Carlos deflected. "You plan on giving them up, when it's time for the end?"

"No."

"Well, you can't take 'em with you." Carlos threw another food wrapper into the grass. This time, Gil was entirely sure that he hadn't been holding it a moment ago. "Eventually, Death takes them, they get sorted, my friends and I ride to end the Earth, and the Upstairs and Downstairs have their battle. That's how it goes; you know that."

Uma didn't answer.

Gil found that his heart was racing.

"Or do _you_ not want the world to end?" Carlos challenged.

"You guys've been walking the Earth almost as long as I have," Uma noted.

"This isn't about us."

"It is, though; you came to me."

"Because it'll be your job to deliver the Antichrist."

"Yeah, and it sounds like you're trying to convince me not to."

Another, longer silence fell. Gil could feel that some sort of understanding was passing between Uma and the Horseman. After several more seconds, Carlos stood up. "Death doesn't know I came here."

"Of course she doesn't," Uma replied. Her wings were relaxing just slightly, so Gil could better see Carlos's tense posture.

"I don't think any of us are really looking forward to it. She's just not ready to admit it."

"I'm sure she isn't. I don't suppose..." Uma broke off and suddenly shivered, her wings trembling for a moment. Gil knew what that meant. "Listen, my boss is coming. I'll let you know if anything changes, okay?"

"Sounds good." Carlos waved his hand over the spot where Uma's clothes were piled. "I just put my number in your phone."

"That better be all you infected my phone with."

For the first time, Carlos looked amused. "I didn't give you a computer virus; cross my heart and hope to discorporate."

Uma shook her wings out and then vanished them. "Get outta here."

Gil was about to ask Uma if Carlos really had a horse, when suddenly:

"Don't leave on my account," said a strident voice, and a pair of horns began to rise from the pond, followed by a head, shoulders, and body. Gil's heartbeat redoubled its pace, and he tried to make himself as small and uninteresting as possible, as Maleficent swept her cold gaze over all of them. _Her_ eyes were not deep like Uma's were; they were simply empty. Empty and cold. Fortunately, they landed on Carlos first. "Pestilence, is that you?" she queried, sounding as close to pleased as she probably ever got.

"It's Pollution now, but yes," he answered, notably leaving off the "Carlos" part of the introduction. "I'll be going now." And then he vanished.

"Nice to see No Name finally keeping some indecent company," Maleficent commented, as though still speaking to Carlos, though now her gaze did land, quite pointedly, on Gil. His face felt aflame.

"He's a politician's kid," Uma said, before Maleficent could ask. "He's of use, and he was just leaving."

Gil readily began wading towards the water's edge, put Maleficent inserted herself into his path of exit, her movements seemingly unimpeded by the weight of the water around them. "Always so quick to dismiss them," she commented, laying a taloned hand on Gil's shoulder and gripping it tightly. "Let me see this one." Obviously, this was not supposed to happen; Maleficent did not take an interest in Gil or Harry, or at least she never _had_. But it seemed she was now.

"Better you than me," Uma said, coldly and almost through clenched teeth. It seemed to be taking a lot of her self-control to rein in her natural hatred for Maleficent touching Gil, but Gil was glad she was managing it; things would only get much worse if she showed him affection now. "Do you know how many different kinds of fluids humans have in them? And their bodies are always releasing one or another; nasty things. Not to mention all the organs they have, just to account for all the fluids."

Maleficent made a disgusted noise and shoved Gil away from her. Gil made a small, shocked sound in his throat as he registered the stinging pain of her talons making a few shallow cuts in his skin before they lost contact. He barely kept from submerging, as he regained his balance. "I don't know how you tolerate them," Maleficent said. "It seems our master chose the right demon for this job." It was as close as Gil had ever heard her come to complimenting Uma, and he felt oddly happy for her.

"Seems he did," Uma agreed, even more stiffly than before. Her voice had jumped a whole octave. "Anything else?"

"Just checking in," Maleficent drawled. "But stay tuned; there may be more news on the horizon, yet." Then the demoness vanished. Odd; normally she stayed about two minutes, and it surely hadn't even been one yet. Maybe all the talk of organs and fluids had done an even better job of grossing her out than expected.

As soon as she was gone, Uma ran to Gil's side, creating the biggest splashes of the day, in her haste. "Let me see," she said, examining the cuts left near Gil's collarbone. "I am so sorry, Gil, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," Gil assured her. "Barely hurts."

"She should _not_ have touched you," Uma hissed. "And I should have told you to leave earlier, or just let you wait for me at the apartment."

"I'm alright with the tradeoff," he said honestly.

"Don't say that."

"We got to spend time together. I'm glad we did this, even if it ended kind of...not great. It's really not that bad; it's just a scratch, promise."

"It's three scratches, and I'm still sorry it happened." She kissed his injury, her touch so light and careful.

No one in his life had ever been as gentle with him as Harry and Uma were. His older brothers had held his head underwater in a literal attempt to drown him when he was seven. (To be fair, they'd only been ten at the time.) When his father had made physical contact at all, it had been to push him out of the way.

It occurred to Gil that the pain of the scratches was gone. "Did you heal it?" he asked.

"There's still a scar," Uma said, with a displeased look. "I suck at healing."

"Well, it doesn't hurt anymore."

"Good. Let's head back; Harry's probably awake. I think..." Uma dipped her head, then stood up to her full height and said, "I think I'm gonna make it an alone day, for me. Maleficent hinted that she might be back. She doesn't usually like coming to Earth too often, but just in case she actually meant it, I should be by myself for a while. She shouldn't see us together again in the same day."

Gil's heart fluttered with worry, even though he knew that Uma wouldn't be substantially worse off without him than she would be with him. If anything, without him there, she'd have less to worry about.

They left the water and started getting dressed.

He wished he were powerful enough to protect her from people like Maleficent.

He wondered if...No, he was being stupid, there was no way. But still...

"Can I learn witchcraft?" he asked.

Uma paused, in the process of putting her pants back on.

"I mean...I know you said there are people who can do it. Do you think I could?"

"I'm sure you could," Uma said, resuming getting dressed but appearing curious, now. "Do you want to?"

"Well...you're always doing magic to help us. I want to be able to do magic to help you."

A touched smile flickered across Uma's face before she was serious again. "I don't know much about human magic; I don't know how dangerous it is to learn. But...if it's something you want to do, I can't tell you not to try. Maybe you should talk to Harry about it, though; he understand human stuff better than I do. He might want to learn with you."

The idea of learning magic with Harry sent a bolt of giddiness through Gil.

His visible excitement made Uma smile again. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. "Come along, you goof," she said, starting them on the path . "Let's get you back to safety, and you can look up witches while I'm gone." After a reflective pause, she added, "Harry and I met one in New Orleans, once. That was over a hundred years ago, but maybe her descendants still practice. Worth checking out."

Gil nodded eagerly. He was glad for the lead, and he liked New Orleans, anyway.

And so, after Uma had dropped him off at the apartment and then left to have her walk, Gil and Harry used their combined levels of search engine mastery to begin sussing out whether there were any remaining members of the Odie family.

~~

It was a birthday party for someone named Hannah, and they were there for the cake.

They didn't know the special song humans sang for birthdays before cake was given out, though they were close to learning it, given all the birthday parties they had crashed.

No one at the party noticed that two girls had snuck in during the song, nor that they were two girls who nobody had ever met before. The first person to speak to them was Hannah's mom, when they were in line for the cake.

"Hi there!" Hannah's mom had an age-lined face, a lot of energy, and a cheery crescent-shaped smile.

Celia _and_ Dizzy were briefly blindsided by the friendliness. It was worse than Ben. Dizzy gripped Celia's arm nervously; she was shuffling from foot to foot, with her tail wrapped around one ankle to better conceal it.

"What are your names?" Hannah's mom continued.

"I'm Celia, that's Dizzy," Celia managed to say. Being smiled at so warmly and welcomingly made her very uncomfortable. This woman didn't know who or what she was. If she did, she wouldn't be smiling.

"Well, Celia, would you like a chocolate piece or a vanilla piece?"

Celia did not know what either word meant, and she couldn't simply point out a piece, because she was concealing her webbed hands in her pockets until they could be hidden under a plate. "The second one?"

"Vanilla? Okay." Hannah's dad stood just behind Hannah's mom, dissecting the cake into wedges. At the last party they'd crashed, the dad had been cutting the cake into cubes. "How about you, Dizzy?"

"Vanilla," Dizzy repeated sheepishly.

They both got a plate of white cake. Celia sealed that information away in her mind: vanilla was the white stuff, and chocolate was the brown stuff. They miracled themselves up to Hannah's house's roof to enjoy the food (not on the side visible from the street; they were becoming pros at avoiding the minor inconvenience that was being observed by humans).

"Mmmm," Dizzy groaned, the sweetness of the cake so potent that her eyes rolled back in ecstasy. "Why don't we have this Downstairs?" The answer was obvious, and they both already knew it, so Celia didn't reply. Her mouth was full anyway.

Someone appeared beside them, and they did not react, because they knew him. "Have you guys met Death yet?" their fellow sorter asked, breathy with awe.

"Hey, Zevon," Dizzy said.

Zevon was about their age, and known Downstairs for being simple-minded. He was especially good at his job, because he always only did exactly what was expected of him. He could be as blind to humans' virtues as he ought to be. "Have you met her?" he asked again.

"I did," Celia answered.

"I've met War," Dizzy offered, and was ignored.

"She's beautiful," Zevon sighed, sprawling languidly back.

Celia called to mind Death's face and supposed that Zevon was right. She almost said 'Yeah, but she's not very nice' before she caught herself and proceeded to have a full crisis over why she had formed such a thought.

_Nice_. What even was that? Why did nice exist?

Ben was nice, and what did it matter? He was still on the opposing side. They were still enemies.

Nice. What a stupid thing to think about.

She looked out at the neighborhood, with its green grass and the flowers in pink and yellow and purple and blue and the light in the windows and the sun and the sky and the clouds, and she wished, for a moment, that she were human. She wished people had celebrated her coming into existence and commemorated it. She wished that so many people liked her that two strangers could just slip into the crowd and she wouldn't notice. She wished she had been born in a house, with someone smiling, and someone cutting food into wedges or cubes. She wished she could be young and cared for. She wanted it so hard that she might have made a miracle happen, were it a smaller dream rather than the intricate rewriting of her whole childhood. But no, it was pointless to wish for something a miracle couldn't bring her.

She was proud of herself when she found that it turned out that she _could_ hate humans, just a little bit.

~~

Wandering was a particular skill of Uma's, and today, it had led her to a birthday party.

Well, not _to_ it; she hadn't gone in. She just stood in the street in the middle of the neighborhood cul de sac, full of the partygoers' cars, and stared at a party streamer dangling from a porch light.

She wasn't sure what had drawn her here, but she felt peculiarly as though she had an appointment with someone. After a full minute, she made herself walk away; she didn't think much of mysterious forces that didn't introduce themselves, and anyway what would Maleficent do (or expect _her_ to do) if she found her so close to a child's birthday party?

She stopped two houses away from the party, momentarily compelled to turn back, but the feeling dissipated after a second.

_Maybe I should just check..._

She walked back to the house where the party was happening. She peeked over the fence, and saw nothing out of the ordinary: kids running around and playing and eating cake. Birthday party stuff. She walked away again, and this time left the neighborhood.

Birthdays might have been the most human thing ever invented. Harry had fully forgotten his own birthday by the time Uma thought to ask him about it, though she had not made the same mistake for Gil; she had asked as soon as he started traveling with them. Now, Harry's birthday was celebrated exactly six months from Gil's birthday, for the sake of symmetry. And she, of course, didn't really celebrate her own birthday. She wasn't sure if it would be the day she was actually Made, or the day she Fell, or the day she first came to Earth.

Birth didn't apply to her. It didn't apply to any of her kind.

Gil had once said, "But it's not fair that you get to celebrate us and we don't get to celebrate you."

It really seemed that he didn't know all that he was to her. All that they were. As if he didn't know that celebrating their birth one day of the year each was _so far_ beneath the bare minimum.

She felt it so powerfully, sometimes (now being one of those times). Sometimes she would just be sitting in bed or floating in a pond and she would just suddenly trip headlong into her own affection for them. Like getting struck by lightning while falling off a cliff.

She really hadn't thought that she could feel for someone the way she felt for Harry, until she'd met Gil.

Audrey was different (and the thought of Audrey did tend to sneak up on her when she was thinking about feelings, didn't it?). The dynamic was different. Different and a little bit scary, because it had taken them the age of the Earth to get to this point, and it was still unclear what they were. Friends?

They protected each other, teased each other, wanted to see each other. Her feelings for Audrey weren't greater or lesser than her feelings for Harry and Gil; they were just different. And more confusing.

There was a time to be confused.

Now was not that time.

Now...now was a rare time when the affection inside her spread to her outside, making her skin tingle and scales itch pleasurably.

She did not try to smother the thrilling sensation, nor did it fade in the following few (Maleficent-free) hours before she started the walk back to her apartment. She was glad that the feeling stuck around; if Gil was similarly predisposed when she got home, this could be an enjoyable night for all three of them.

~~

Shortly after Ben's visit, Audrey felt strongly compelled to visit the local pool.

She went, with her towel and bathing suit, expecting at the very least a peaceful swim and at the very most another Pompeii situation, where her angelic intuition drew her someplace because something horrible was about to happen.

What she got was neither, as the pool had been all but annexed by an ongoing birthday party. She stood curiously by the poolside, seeing nothing of note taking place (just kids having fun) but still sensing that there was something for her here. She waited all of seven minutes before anything interesting happened, and that was just the birthday cake falling over and splattering against the tile floor.

Apparently, two girls had been impatient and hoped to serve themselves early without anyone noticing.

Audrey winced as the birthday boy's mother ran over to question the girls, who looked properly stunned. To her credit, the woman wasn't taking a confrontational tone with the children, though she did ask, "Where are your mothers? Who came with you here?"

Both girls' mouths opened, but neither gave an answer. They still looked stunned by having been caught in the first place.

It was at that moment that Audrey noticed the tail that one of the girls was trying to conceal, and the fact that the hands that the other girl kept clasped behind her back were webbed between the fingers.

"I brought them!" she called out, before she could talk herself out of it. It was their startled faces that had gotten to her, and how their hiding of their non-human features reminded her of Uma.

Both girls- the demon sorters, they must have been; young ones, just like Ben had told her about -looked perplexed as Audrey strode over, put the birthday boy's mother under a light daze, and repaired the cake. 

"There," she said brightly. "All fixed. Girls, let's go." She placed a hand on each of their backs and led them from the pool. As an afterthought, she miracled them some cake slices of their own.

"You're an angel," one girl accused, frowning suspiciously even as she licked frosting from her fingers. 

"I am," Audrey agreed. Her mind was racing with the moral panic she had come to expect whenever she made a decision, and yet her voice had never been so calm and steady. "I'm Audrey. Audrey Rose. I've been stationed on Earth since Eden. And you two look like you could use a place to rest and wash off. Am I right?"

Neither girl answered.

"I have a place. It's a flower sh-"

Before she could finish her sentence, the girls ran off.

Audrey sighed, watching them go. "A flower shop," she finished, for herself. Well. She had offered.

It wasn't until later that day, when the sun was setting and Audrey was in her flat above the flower shop, trying to alter one of her old dresses to look more like one in a magazine, that she heard a knock on the door downstairs. And she opened the door to the sheepish, dirt-smudged face of one of the two girls from earlier. The mouse-tailed one.

"I need to stay the night," the girl said awkwardly. It was nowhere close to the polite way to ask for something, but it was probably the best she could do, given she'd probably never been taught to _ask_, in the first place.

"Come on in," Audrey said.

The girl's name was Dizzy, she liked human food as much as Audrey did, if not more, and she ended up sleeping in Audrey's bed while Audrey opted to stay up tending to her flowers.

Early the following morning, when Audrey tiptoed upstairs with a tray of breakfast foods, she was already gone.

~~

Around the same time, Uma was strolling through downtown New Orleans with her boys- intermittently grinning at how excited Gil was to speak French with someone other than them and laughing at Harry trying on sunglasses and hats and Mardi Gras masks in every shop they passed -and absently wondering why, after centuries of only growing in the slow, incremental way that angels and demons grew, she so suddenly found her clothes a bit tight around the stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Sorry for the wait! Please comment!
> 
> Fortunately, I've now figured out what I plan on doing with the plot, so this should be fun. Sorry certain characters didn't get to interact in this chapter; hopefully it was still enjoyable. In all honesty, I spent a lot of time going back and forth on certain things, and I've decided to just commit.


	4. Baby, Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I definitely had more difficulty writing this chapter than I have with most, but I figured it was better to post it than to keep agonizing over it, so I'm sorry if the quality isn't great. Better luck next time, lol.

Despite the fact that they normally went five years before meeting again, or at least before _arranging_ to meet again, Audrey received a text message from Uma merely a few weeks after their most recent meet-up at the diner.

Dizzy was over at the time; they were having a sort of tea party. It turned out, the little girl was splendid company, and, when brought out of her shell, quite talkative. She was babbling away about her friends Celia and Zevon, expounding on how Celia was too wary to come over, even though Dizzy had reassured her that Audrey was nice (and wasn’t that a surprisingly rewarding assessment to hear?), and how Zevon just couldn’t be trusted to keep Audrey a secret. 

There was absolutely nothing evil about Dizzy, and sometimes it upset Audrey so profoundly that she had to leave the room, knowing that the other unFallen demon children were probably just like her, just normal kids, with no particular inclination to torture humans. Children who had been consigned to horrible childhoods Downstairs, by happenstance of birth. But today, Audrey just listened to her. She giggled and nodded where appropriate and let Dizzy talk and miracled the plate to refill with cookies when it emptied.

Then her phone let out its harp riff text tone, and the screen lit up with the message:

**Uma:** _Audrey do we have internal organs?_

Audrey stared at the odd question until the screen dimmed. It lit up again shortly:

**Uma:** _I mean, do they work?_

**Uma:** _Not asking for a friend, asking for me, answer asap_

Why on earth would she know whether they had organs? She had assumed not. At the very least, not all of them. Lungs maybe, but she had assumed that things like spleens or whatever were just a human thing. After all, these bodies were just vessels, and she never really let food progress far enough to do the digesting process; she just miracled it away once it was swallowed. She had never _asked_ about what was _inside_ the vessel; just whether she could make some changes to the ears. And they'd said no.

She picked up the phone, and that was when Dizzy asked her, "Is something wrong?"

And then it dawned on her: She _did_ know. Ben had as much as told her, hadn't he? If demons could reproduce to make Dizzy and Celia and Zevon, then they had to have some of the physical equipment. After all, Downstairs didn't know how to Create.

"Nothing's wrong," she said, with a smile. "Just a friend who's being..." She didn't know what Uma was being. She unlocked her phone and fired a reply.

**Audrey:** _I think so. Y?_

"What's your friend like?" Dizzy asked, her eyes lighting up like they always did when new information became available. "What's her name? Is she an angel like you?"

Audrey opened her mouth to answer honestly, then caught herself and shut it. Uma would not like her giving her name out, especially not to the other demons and especially not in the context of their...friendship.

She had really called it that, hadn't she?

The harp sound started up again.

**Uma:** _I'm on my way._

Oh dear. "No, she's not an angel. She actually..." Audrey glanced quickly around the room and noticed a spare bit of fabric from her sewing station. She wrapped up the cookies in the fabric and handed the bundle to Dizzy. "She's on her way, and she really shouldn't see you here. Um..."

"I get it; I'll leave." Dizzy took the implied dismissal in stride, but there was a wistful undertone that saddened Audrey. She didn't _want_ to kick the poor girl out, but keeping Uma out of trouble was a higher priority, and who knew what trouble Uma would get herself into if she knew about the second-generation demons?

"Do you need any milk, or...?"

"No, thank you, I don't need anything. Bye-bye, Audrey." Dizzy was learning formalities, like saying "no _thank you_" instead of just "no", from Audrey. She was learning cuteness, like saying "bye-bye" instead of "goodbye", from human children. They made for a rather lethal combination.

Dizzy left with the bundle of cookies, and Audrey took a moment to release a breath and wallow in guilt for having turned her away. Then she remembered that Uma was on her way, and her whole body buzzed with energy. Audrey sprinted to the nearest mirror. Really, she had barely put on any makeup today! She raced to her room to rectify that. Sure, Uma had seen her without makeup plenty of times, but...

But what?

But she wanted to be presentable, that was all. She had company coming; she could stand to do something about these eyes. Anyway, _Gil_ had never seen her without makeup, and why disabuse him of the idea that she might have woken up like this? And oh, her hair. What had she been thinking, flat ironing it? It was all frizzy now! She hastily worked it into two French braids and was clipping some gold bands onto them when the bell over shop door chimed, in the other room.

"Dree?" Uma's voice called out.

Audrey ran to greet the new arrivals. Predictably, Harry and Gil were right behind Uma, and Uma...

Wait.

Audrey squinted, for a moment thinking that it was just an odd angle, or a strange design choice in Uma's shirt. But no, no amount of staring gave her eyes a new interpretation, and the way that Uma was standing seemed to deliberately draw attention to the odd but definite bulge in her midriff.

The clock ticked once, then Audrey's eyes blew comically wide, and she glanced quickly from Uma to the boys and back. She might have shouted something, but there was no air in her lungs (which she was pretty sure she had).

"Can I sit?" Uma asked flatly, and Audrey scrambled for a chair.

~~

Dizzy absolutely loved The Earth, and she wanted to stay here forever.

She loved food and people and colors and the comparative shortage of crawly things. And the crawly things they did have were pretty, too! Gorgeous patterns, cuddly fur...

She loved The Earth. And she wasn't very good at hiding it.

"Are you _smiling_?" Maleficent said critically, and Dizzy froze, fear shooting through her, and dropped her ice cream cone.

"H-Hi," she said. "I don't have a job right now." That was the first essential thing to convey, that she wasn't shirking her duties. Maleficent was already unimpressed with her lack of success in gaining souls, and it had been made clear that only the looming inconvenience of her mother's vengeful temper was currently keeping Dizzy from being reduced to a puddle of goo.

"So you partake in...what is that?" One of Maleficent's clawed fingers pointed at the lump of ice cream on the ground with all the churlish dislike as if it might have been a lump of holy water or something.

It wasn't that Dizzy didn't know that it would benefit her to lie; it wasn't even that she didn't _want_ to lie; it was just that she couldn't think of one. So instead, she said, "It's ice cream. Humans invented it. It's cold and sweet."

Maleficent snarled, and Dizzy shrank back, fearing her claws or her power...

And an arm landed around her shoulder.

Suddenly, there was an older girl standing at her side, lovely and well-dressed with red-painted lips pursed in disdain. "Maleficent," the girl said, in a melodic voice. "Long time no see."

"Famine!" Maleficent greeted, her hostility toward Dizzy evidently forgotten. "Is that really you?"

"It is."

Dizzy went breathless with awe. Famine herself had an arm around her shoulders? This probably meant that she was in even more danger than before, but she couldn't focus on that; meeting Famine was too cool. Downstairs, they had always said that Famine was thin, but they had never said that she was lovely, or that she wore such well-coordinated outfits, or that her hair was blue.

"What are you doing here?" (Dizzy had never seen Maleficent ask a question with genuine curiosity before. Questions were normally just precursors to punishment.)

"I feel it every time someone drops an ice cream cone; I'm responsible for the feeling of bitterness that keeps them from buying another one but also keeps them from getting over it." Famine released Dizzy, then, and pensively held her own slightly dimpled chin between her thumb-tip and forefinger knuckle as she looked Dizzy over with her light brown eyes. (Dizzy's tail twitched, but otherwise she held still under the Horseman's scrutiny.) "I would like to be alone with this girl," she primly informed Maleficent.

Maleficent flashed Dizzy a final look of dislike before saying, "Very well," and vanishing. Just like that.

Dizzy let out a breath, even though Famine was still here and she wasn't out of the woods yet.

"What is your name?" Famine asked.

"Dizzy," she squeaked out.

"Dizzy." And Famine's red lips formed a wide, unbelievably friendly smile. "I'm Evie. You're one of the new demons, right?"

"Yes." She wanted to ask how Famine could be Evie _and_ Famine at the same time, but she couldn't ask because she couldn't form sentences.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you. If Maleficent tries to bother you again, just chew some gum and I'll be there, okay?"

"Okay," Dizzy blurted out, even though she hadn't learned what gum was yet.

"Okay." Evie nodded, then waved her fingers prettily. "Well, I should go. Goodbye then." And Famine, too, vanished.

Dizzy stared at the space Evie had just been occupying for a few more seconds, then stared down at what was left of her ice cream cone. She didn't feel any bitterness over dropping it, and she hadn't paid real money for it in the first place, but still she decided not to get any more.

~~

"So what do you think?" Uma asked. She was holding the hem of her shirt up so Audrey could see her tummy. On any other day, Audrey might have been distracted by the blue-green scales along Uma's hips, peeking out over the waistband of her pants, but today...Well, she was _still_ a little distracted, and seized by a veritable plague of tingles across her whole body, but mostly she was focused on the noticeable protrusion of Uma's midsection.

"You're totally pregnant," she said, and she was pleased by how smooth her voice sounded, in contrast with her racing thoughts.

"As opposed to being partially pregnant," Uma snarked, but the joke must have just been a reflex or something, because she didn't even let it breathe before she was tensely continuing, "Is this possible? When did this become a thing?"

"It's a thing," Audrey said, not quite answering the second question.

“Why didn’t you know it was possible?” Harry asked. He was crouched beside Uma's chair, managing to be positioned lower than she was without ever quite allowing himself to sit down. Gil, meanwhile, knelt on the other side of Uma, with his brow furrowed as though he was still figuring things out.

“Because there were only two generations of angels and demons when I got here!” Uma said hotly. Despite her sharp tone, her hand gripped his wrist as though to stay afloat. “Everyone had been Created! Since when can we make offspring the human way?”

“I don’t know,” Audrey said.

"But you knew it was possible, though."

"Yes, I...I knew that. I learned recently."

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I…” She trailed off, sheepishly.

“What?” Uma asked. Her hand was still placed on her abdomen, her eyes quite wide. “Because what?”

“Well, I…I knew that it would upset you.”

“Why would it upset me to know that we can reproduce?”

“Because…Well, remember when you were worried that the sorter demons who came to earth might hurt Harry or Gil?”

“Yes.”

“I met two of them. They’re…children. Who didn’t Fall. They were born demons. Of demons. So they're...they have to be...You know. It's just...They're demons who didn't Fall.” (Good grief, she was practically stammering. She sounded like Jane.)

Uma paused, her eyes narrowing as she turned over the implications in her mind. “Excuse me?” she said.

“Listen, we have bigger problems now,” Audrey blurted out. “Maleficent can’t see you like that.”

Uma swore. She tugged the fabric of her shirt back down over the bared skin of her midriff and squeezed Harry's hand in distress. “She will eventually. I couldn’t hide this _now_, let alone when it…” She frowned deeply, seeming to make a series of mental calculations.

"I won't let her touch you; I'll kill 'er first," Harry assured her, which Audrey thought was very nice but practically meaningless.

“How long is a pregnancy?” Uma asked.

Harry shrugged helplessly, having had no occasion to commit such a thing to memory, and plenty of time to forget if he had ever known it, and Uma's gaze shifted back to Audrey.

“Like I know!” Audrey shrieked. Her initial panic was exacerbated by the way Uma was looking at her. She could not have broken eye contact if she'd tried. “For humans…almost a year, I think? Or is it more than a year...It's either a little more or a little less than a year.”

“Nine months, usually,” Gil said. It was the first time he’d joined the conversation, and his voice sounded dazed. Uma turned to look at him and saw that he appeared to be thinking hard.

“Gil?” she prompted.

He glanced nervously at Audrey before he met Uma's gaze and tried to explain, “I think I…I mean, I was the last one to...” He gestured vaguely at her womb.

“Oh, yeah.” Uma tilted her head, seeming more curious than anything. “I guess so. Good job; looks like you knocked it out of the park, there.”

Belatedly, Audrey caught on: Had Gil worked out, mathematically, that the baby was his? Her mind had honestly hopped right over that part of things: the idea that Uma's pregnancy was directly related to the two fertile, phallus-having guys she spent all her time with. Audrey knew that the three of them had sex, and probably often (if any of them were sane), but the connection between that and pregnancy had eluded her for a moment.

"I mean, it's Harry's baby, too," Gil said, hastily and almost guilty-sounding, as though he wished he hadn't pointed anything out. "Just because I probably made it doesn't mean it's not his, too."

"We're having a baby?" Harry rasped out, as stunned as though that hadn't been the topic of conversation for over a minute now. And oh dear, he looked incandescent with wonder.

“Are you really keeping it?” Audrey asked.

Uma thought for one second, then distinctly said, “Yes. I want to.”

Audrey blinked, her face puckered with worry, but she didn’t argue. “Okay, well what’s the plan for dealing with Maleficent? And…having a baby? And the twenty-plus years after babyhood?”

“Maleficent doesn’t get an explanation; she’ll come up with an explanation of her own, and if it works for me, I won’t argue. _Having_ the baby will probably happen on its own; not sure how you really plan for that…”

“Aren’t you supposed to pack a bag for the hospital or something?"

"No hospitals," Uma said quickly.

"I watch TV; you’re supposed to pack a bag, and be driven to a hospital, and breathe like this” (Audrey made a series of breathy hee-hee-hoo-hoo sounds.) “and push.”

“Push what?”

“I don’t know, but I think you’ll know when it happens. Also, stay out of elevators; on TV, they always stop working right when you go into labor, and whatever randoms are in there with you will have to help with the delivery.”

“One of these days I’ll have to read up on how human birth makes elevators shut down.” It was unclear whether or not Uma was being sarcastic.

“What about after?” Audrey brought up again. “You just…raise a child? The three of you?” 

“Why not?” Uma asked, spreading her hands and looking to Harry and Gil, who were both still looking dazed, but also noticeably pleased.

Audrey opened her mouth, then closed it, bit at her lips, and opened it again. “Maybe because I can help?” she suggested, somehow both sheepishly and impulsively. Oh, her face was already burning, but no turning back now. “Make it an even four? I mean, I’ve been a baby nurse every now and then. It was in different time periods, but I get the gist. I can…babysit, while you’re out rioting, or whatever. And...” Suddenly, dawn seemed to break across her face, as it broke into an excited smile. "Ooh! Can I help name it? So many pretty names have gone out of vogue. Please let me name your baby."

"_Heaven_, Audrey," Uma said, with a stunned laugh, and she probably was about to say more, probably a _lot_ more, but Audrey suddenly knew that she could not bear to be questioned until she'd said her piece, so she babbled on:

"We help each other, you know? We've been helping each other the whole time, and...I want to help." No, that explanation was incomplete. "I want to...be a part of things." _Oh_, that was so much worse! So much more embarrassing! "I mean...You're having a baby, and that's exciting, and I want to help."

Uma was staring at her, her lips still curved into a surprised smile, her eyes narrowed a bit. (Audrey managed not to squirm uncomfortably as she waited for an answer.) "Weren't you just saying we weren't friends?"

The reminder caused Audrey's stomach (provided she had one) to drop, with something unpleasantly similar to guilt. "That was..." She wasn't sure how she meant to finish the sentence, not sure if she wanted to say that it had actually been a long time ago that that was said, or that it had been untrue, or that it had been unkind. 

Uma didn't seem interested in making it easier for her; she just stared with interest, waiting for Audrey's reply to form. Her expectant face, her dark brown eyes, only made it harder for Audrey to get her thoughts in order.

She restarted, "I was..." And what? Had she been wrong, lying, in denial, unkind? All of the above? None of it? Anything short of honesty, she knew, would alienate Uma more. But what was honest? Did she even know?

She did.

Could she say it out loud, though?

_One way to find out._

"I wasn't ready," she confessed, as bluntly as she knew how, "to accept that the way I feel about you isn't how I've been taught to feel about demons."

Uma didn't even pause before giving her response: "And now you are?" Seemingly outside of her notice, both of her hands had returned to her baby bump, cradling it protectively. "You're not going to change your mind if the baby comes out and isn't perfect?"

"If it comes out of you, it will be," Audrey said. The moment the words left her, she felt far too vulnerable. It was what she would have wanted someone to tell _her_, and...and Uma...It was wrong to say that Uma was perfect, but she was beautiful, and she was more driven and passionate than anyone Audrey knew, and being around her was...Audrey felt too vulnerable, saying it. She was sure that she ought to be ashamed.

Uma evidently didn't appreciate her words, either; her hands on her belly tensed. "If it comes out of me, it'll be a demon like me."

"I know that," Audrey assured her.

"And they won't have chosen it, like I did. Never _Fallen_."

Audrey almost said that she knew that, too, but then she realized that it was probably better to let Uma speak without interrupting or trying to absolve herself.

"You can't pretend that it doesn't make a difference to you, because I've seen that it does. And that's fine when it's just us, because I can take it, but..."

Audrey accidentally met Harry's eyes and then quickly looked away. She had seen the way he looked at people he thought might hurt Uma, but she wasn't used to being one of them. Seeing the hard-edged wariness and defensiveness from this side made her throat tighten. She never wanted to be someone who hurt Uma, or even someone who was suspected to be at risk of hurting Uma. Uma hadn't for a moment feared that Harry or Gil would fail to accept the baby for what it was- only Audrey.

Moisture prickled at her eyes, but she kept it back. How selfish would that be, to cry at a time like this?

"What's changed?" Uma asked, and there was a pause long enough that Audrey might have been expected to speak, but then Uma repeated herself, "What's changed between then and now, besides me being...pregnant?"

Oh dear. Did Uma really think that Audrey just wanted to coo over a pretty baby? That the whole demon thing was just a nasty detail that she was willing to ignore, so long as something _cute_ was involved? "I..." How to convey that that wasn't true? Convey it clearly enough that there wouldn't still be doubt? "I've..." She took a deep breath. _Angels are honest. Angels express themselves clearly._ "I had let my need to be Good become a fear of being Evil, and I had allowed myself to think that liking you would make me Evil. It took me a while to learn that I was wrong, but...eventually I started judging a tree by its fruit. And you are so, so courageous and kind, Uma."

Uma flinched, with a quiet hiss, and Audrey didn't know how to interpret it, but she kept going:

"I think I noticed that early on, and it scared me more, because if someone like you could be a demon, then I certainly couldn't be far from one, and I kept searching for ways that you were any worse than me, and I could only find the opposite; I think it was during the American Civil War that I started to recognize my fear for what it was and started to come to terms with how little it had to do with you. I should never have let you think that...Uma, you have a quality about you that makes people really love you, and it was always my fault that I was scared of what loving you means."

Uma abruptly turned and left the flower shop, with the cacophonous sound of the bells over the door being disrupted, to punctuate her hasty departure. Harry was quick to follow, and Gil was right behind him, though _he_ at least flashed Audrey a quick approving look before leaving.

She let out a breath. She was alone in her home, and felt emotionally exfoliated in a way that she never had before. Uma hadn't responded as hoped, but honestly how could she? Audrey's words had overwhelmed even herself.

Audrey went around spritzing her flowers, turned on some music, and made peace with the fact that she had done her best to explain herself. To make amends.

It took a few minutes for her own words to start haunting her.

_I was scared of what loving you means._

Well that was...That was fine, right? It wasn't weird to say that she loved Uma; they'd been intermittently hanging out for centuries now. Uma would know what she meant, right?

_...loving you..._

Uma wouldn't overthink it. Uma didn't overthink things like Audrey did; she wouldn't misunderstand the type of love.

The type of love.

Audrey's thoughts promptly scattered into a million questions and worries and memories and fancies, and she shoved them all down. Flowers. Just spritz the flowers; no use confusing herself about her own feelings. She loved Uma in the way that friends loved each other. Did she want Uma to love her back, in the same way? Yes.

Goodness, would Uma ever be able to trust her? Would she ever be able to earn Uma's trust?

And Uma, _pregnant_.

What a day.

It was another two hours before Uma, Harry, and Gil all returned to the flower shop. The humans were holding fast food bags, and Uma barely made eye contact with Audrey as she swiftly disclosed that she just needed a place to stow her boys while she spoke to Maleficent.

"Of course; good luck!" Audrey said, and the words were barely out before Uma was leaving all over again, with another crash of the bells.

Fair enough.

Audrey sighed and pressed her lips together.

"I liked your speech," Gil said, through a mouthful of chicken nuggets.

"'Twas passable," Harry drawled.

"I thought it was good. She spoke from the heart. And the part where she said that Uma has a way of making people love her was so true."

Talking about her speech was more humiliating than the speech itself. "So, what have you boys been up to lately?" she digressed, sitting down and crossing her legs. The boys were still standing, by all appearances because the news about the coming baby had left them with too much energy to keep still; both were wandering about the shop, looking at the flowers and smiling dazedly whenever they caught each other's eye.

"Trying to learn magic," Gil said casually. "We found this woman named Mama Odie, in New Orleans; she's so smart and wise and stuff. She can do magic in, like, five different ways. Some of them she won't teach us, though, because they're, like, really sacred to her culture, but there's one that she says she _can_ teach."

"We never got around to learning much, though," Harry sighed. "We left too soon."

Audrey didn't have to ask why they would want to learn magic. She was honestly surprised it had taken them this long; humans seemed so defenseless against angels and demons without some sort of supernatural powers of their own. "Hopefully you make it back there before long, then." Unfinished interactions should always be gotten to quickly; she had been late for meetings with so many mortals, had gotten caught up doing something or other and only returned to the correct country weeks or decades after the human's passing.

"Not before the baby's born," Gil said. The word "baby" still full of wonder. "Uma wants to stay in town."

Audrey tried to contain her reaction. "Really?"

Harry nodded, making steady eye contact with Audrey all the while. He did not seem as defensive as before, but he was certainly more serious than usual. "We can be here for her, but we can't understand what she's going through the way you can. She wants you to be with her when she has the baby."

Relief and joy coursed through Audrey so quickly and strongly that she sprang to her feet and let out a squeal. "Oh, _good!_ I would love to be there! I mean, here. If she does have it here. I won't let her down. Oh, should we buy a cradle? Or a papoose? A papoose would be so convenient. And will we need bottles and stuff? I guess we should probably wait to see how the baby comes out first. We don't know _what_ they'll need. If they have fangs, a bottle might not be the best call. How would we feed them if they came out with fangs? I should read up on that. I'll go to the library tomorrow. Oh, wait, no, Internet! I can just..." She trailed off, noticing that she had been babbling and Harry and Gil were looking at her with curiosity. "I'm excited," she finished.

"Oh my gosh, do you think the baby'll be able to turn into a snake?" Gil asked Harry, his eyes wide and enthusiastic. "Do you think they'll have scales, and wings? I'll have to learn how to change diapers!"

"If the baby even needs them," Harry pointed out. "If they're like Uma, they won't."

"Half-human...I don't even know if there's a precedent for that," Audrey realized. "The others have demons for both parents. We don't know _what_ it'll be like."

"We'll make sure the baby learns Scottish Gaelic, and French, in case it doesn't speak Uma's pre-Babel language."

"You wanna raise it in Scotland, so it can pick up the accent?"

"We'll have to ask Uma about-"

Harry and Gil kept up their excited patter of conversation, while Audrey sat quietly for a minute and really ruminated on the truth of her words. They really did not know what was coming. On almost every level, this was a first, and it was impossible to know what to expect.

~~

Uma had not expected Maleficent to be so on-board with the pregnancy.

She had attempted to keep her baby bump hidden under an overlarge jacket (Gil's jacket) the first time she'd met with her boss, the day Audrey confirmed Uma's suspicions about what was going on with her body, but Maleficent hadn't failed to spot it anyway. 

And she'd been thrilled. "Building the ranks of our Master," she'd said. "How fortunate that someone was able to look past your..." (She'd gestured vaguely at Uma's entire form, then, as if every part of it was distasteful.) "...small size, and unimposing stature, and lack of fortitude."

And Uma had just set her jaw and taken the insults, momentarily relieved that this meant her baby was safe.

But the other shoe would drop soon. Maleficent thought that the baby was all demon, not half-human. Maleficent thought that she was spawning a new minion for their army. These assumptions would make it very difficult to keep the baby away from Maleficent once it was born.

But for now. For the duration of the pregnancy, her baby was protected by Maleficent's incorrect guess.

The pregnancy was not very long.

She and her boys stayed over at Audrey's place for most of it. The first night that Uma returned from her meeting with Maleficent, exhausted and twitchy with dread for the long term, did a great deal to thaw the tensions between them; she let Audrey fuss over her and urge her into bed, and she let Harry and Gil give her their leftover fries and chatter about baby care things, and child rearing things. They made her laugh, Audrey made them let her sleep. When she woke up, her boys were on either side of her and Audrey was bringing them breakfast in bed.

For one month and some change, Uma stayed mostly in the flower shop, making plans and staying healthy by human standards ("You don't know what nutrients the baby will need," Audrey reminded her sternly.) and playing cards and catching herself watching Audrey twirl and hum as she watered her flowers, or watching Audrey and Harry teach Gil old dances, or watching Harry and Gil practice what little magic they'd managed to learn from Mama Odie. It was a warm feeling, and it perturbed her, sometimes, how the affection she felt for Harry and Gil seemed to automatically swell up for Audrey, too. How contented she felt when all three of them took turns placing their hand over her growing bump, to feel the baby kick. The wild joy of crashing waves in Harry's eyes, the radiant sunlight in Gil's, the warm depth in Audrey's.

She met Dizzy twice during her time there; the little mouse-tailed girl visited Audrey for snacks and conversation and, unstated but obvious, to be cared for by someone older who genuinely wanted her to be happy. (Harry and Gil stayed in the bedroom when Dizzy came over; it was better if she didn't know, any more than Maleficent did, about the parentage of Uma's baby.) She asked questions, and learned about Dizzy's plight, Dizzy's job, and felt outraged.

"She's putting children in charge of securing souls, and then getting mad at you for not knowing how?" Uma demanded. Audrey set a consoling hand on her arm and gave her a look as if to remind her of how much was at stake if she challenged Maleficent. As if she didn't know that having a baby was all the more reason to be furious about unfair things. "How many Neverfallen are there?" (That was what she had taken to calling them.)

"The number changes a lot," Dizzy said. She was using a hand-mirror and a paper towel to clean all of the chocolate from her mouth and cheeks, because Uma had told her that she could only press her ear to the baby bump once she'd tidied up. "I think, now, it's me, Celia, Zevon, Squeaky, Squirmy, Maisy, and Mortimer. Squeaky and Squirmy are twins. So are Mortimer and Maisy. Do you think you'll have twins?"

Uma and Audrey made eye contact, with matching expressions that clearly conveyed something along the lines of 'Oh dear, I never thought of that.'

Both times she was over, Dizzy fell asleep at the table. She never asked why she wasn't being invited to sleep upstairs anymore; she just rubbed her eyes when she woke up and squeaked out her "thank you"s and "bye-bye"s.

"Seven Neverfallen," Uma muttered, with her hand over her womb.

"Two sets of twins," Audrey said.

And they sat in comfortable silence, ruminating over both thoughts. Something would have to be done about the Neverfallen, done _for_ the Neverfallen. Something more drastic than just giving them a place to crash and eat sweets. In that, Uma stood firm. She sipped at a mug of tea (Audrey really had her drinking tea.) and thought through her options. Then an hour later, she went to bed with her boys.

But eventually, the calm had to yield to the storm.

When Uma was close to popping (and Harry and Gil were even more fastidious about opening doors for her and pulling out her chairs than usual), she got a message from Maleficent, demanding to talk.

"Just another dumb meeting," she assured everyone, and while she believed that this was true, she still hated the timing. She hated to be away from them at a time like this. It wasn't as though she had a due date, but nevertheless it would be soon. They knew that it could come any day now. "I'll be back soon."

"Let us drive you," Harry insisted. He was still terrible at driving cars, but it was understood that such a suggestion always really meant that Gil should drive and Harry should ride along. "We'll wait in the car; she'll never see us."

"I'm not risking it," Uma said. Letting Maleficent stumble across her boys any other time was already risky, but now, when she was pregnant? When the fact that the baby was half-human was such a fragile secret? "Take care of them, Audrey."

Audrey nodded, though her expression was pinched with worry. "Call us if anything goes wrong."

As if Maleficent would give her time to whip out her phone if their interaction started going south. "Sure. I'll be back soon."

She exited, to the jingle of bells.

She drove herself to the meeting point. Maleficent was waiting for her, a shadowy figure.

Uma pulled over, into what was _not_ a parking spot, and extracted herself carefully from the car.

"Late," Maleficent called out to her.

"If you're talking about when you sent the message, then I agree." If there was one thing Uma detested about occupying a humanoid form, it was the fact that it placed her baby in such a vulnerable position. She was practically leading with it when she walked. She had half a mind to let her wings out for the express purpose of shielding with them, but it was best not to be so obviously defensive, where Maleficent was concerned. "What is it?"

"Not a drop of respect in you, is there?" Maleficent tutted, with a cryptic smirk. "Did my praise, during our last meeting, give you an inflated sense of your own worth?"

"You mean when you said that I'm weak and unimposing but thankfully fertile? Yeah, that went right to my head." She was glad for her own dryness; it was all that she had to cover how unnerved she was. Maleficent seemed...too happy. Too easygoing. Like she knew something that Uma didn't. Again, the wing plan came to mind, but she kept it on the back burner. "Seriously, what's the deal? Why'd you call me here?"

"As much as I distrust your competency, your _exploits_ in this mortal realm have earned you a unique honor. I'm told that you knew of this." And then, from somewhere behind her, she produced...

Oh, oh no.

She produced a basket.

Uma stared at the thing. Yes, she'd known. She and Carlos had even discussed what she would do when...when this...

"Finally speechless," Maleficent observed. "I'll have to savor this feeling."

"It's not time, is it?" she breathed. This couldn't be the end of the world. Not yet. Not now. What about Harry and Gil? What about...?

"Yes, your time in this wretched place should end soon," Maleficent said. "Take him, won't you?"

Uma took the basket, even as every part of her screamed to leave it with Maleficent. She could certainly feel that there was something inside.

"To the deed, now! He must be swapped with the newborn child of the chosen family. Dispose of the extraneous child however you like; let that be my treat to you." Then, just like that, Maleficent vanished, leaving Uma with the basket of...

The basket with...

She didn't look at it- only peeked in the basket just enough to verify that there was something humanoid and babyish squirming in the shadows there. She uttered a four-letter word, then yelled it, then muttered it to herself so many times that it lost meaning.

The basket went into the back seat of her car and she into the driver's seat. She deliberated over her choices for a few seconds before reaching for her phone to contact Carlos as promised...and then she felt what could only be her water breaking, and she quickly dropped her phone, started the car, and drove in a random direction.

And so it happened that Uma was alone with a baby Antichrist when she went into labor.

At the start, she thought that she'd ignore the sensations; she murmured a new swear word (to replace the one she had ruined with repetition) and took the first turn she could, hoping to get back home (well, back to the flower shop) before the birth actually happened. A contraction wrung through her whole being, but she managed at least not to veer off the street. There were too few streetlights. Where was she anyway? There had to be an exit eventually, right? Why did this one road seem to go on forever?

She was driving the wrong way for too long. There were no turns, no exits. Just road, and the obligation to at least move forward rather than staying still. The Adversary made the occasional noise from the back seat, but he did not cry. Random lone houses came and went. And the contractions grew closer and closer together.

_Please, don't let this happen while I'm all alone._

_Please don't let it happen while I'm alone with That._

It was at the point where Uma knew that she was weaving all over the road that a church materialized in the distance. Her whole being shuddered in fright at the holiness of the place, but at least there was a streetlight next to it. She screeched to a stop and tried to breathe. Squeezing her eyes shut. The pain was enough that she shouldn't be driving. It wouldn't be safe, for anyone. She resigned herself to the idea that if the baby was coming tonight at all, it would be coming here and now.

The car door opened next to her, and Uma's eyes snapped open to see a pair of concerned nuns reaching for her. Of course, they had heard the car tires and come to investigate, and of course they wanted to help a pregnant woman in need.

"No," Uma said hoarsely, but her mind was too scrambled from the panic of today's revelations to say anything coherent, and the nuns just helped her out of the car and got her walking towards the safety of the church. "No, wa-"

And then her words were lost.

When Uma screamed, it was not because she was in labor. The contractions were annoying and uncomfortable, but being led over consecrated ground was agonizing. The nuns tutted pityingly, intermittently saying "I know, dear," even though they didn't. They didn't feel like lightning was shooting up their legs, like fire was burning their feet.

Uma gritted her teeth and kept insisting, "Not here. Not here. Anywhere but here." The baby. Oh Heaven, would it hurt the baby, too, to be here? It was half-human, but it was half-demon, too. She actively shoved the nuns off of her. "Not here, I said!" She hobbled back toward the car and threw open the nearest door; the door to the back seat. By now, the Adversary was shrieking, either because of the car's abrupt stop or because it could sense that it had been abandoned or for any of the various reasons babies cried.

The nuns made understanding noises. 

"Oh, there's another baby!"

"Twins!"

Uma groaned as another contraction caused her knees to shake. She sank into the seat right beside the basket. She was no longer on consecrated ground; the excruciating pain had averted, and in its place was exhaustion. She didn't fight anymore as the nuns worked on unclothing her bottom half and checking on the baby. If it had visible signs of its nature that might make them ask questions, then she would deal with that after. Humans could forget things easily. This was fine.

Uma allowed her eyes to close for a moment. She must have blacked out, because when she closed them, her head was resting against the basket, but when she opened them, her head was in the lap of another nun. They had moved her, but not far; she was still off the holy earth, but now she was on the ground _outside_ the car, instead of half-in-half-out.

"Push," they were telling her, just like Audrey had said they would.

A baby was crying somewhere. Was it hers, or the other one? She wished she hadn't made her boys stay behind. She wished it was Harry or Gil or Audrey holding her hands instead of a random nun in the middle of nowhere.

They must see her scales, mustn't they?

"Push!"

She pushed.

"Keep pushing."

She kept pushing. Her eyes fluttered closed again, and when she opened them this time, they were dabbing sweat from her brow with the end of someone's sleeve.

"Awake now, dear?" the oldest nun asked.

Uma nodded groggily, then sat bolt upright. "Where-?"

"Here are your little men," a younger nun said, with a cloying, indulgent tone, and she knelt beside Uma with a baby in each arm, both sleeping peacefully and swaddled in white blankets. "They're both healthy. Do you know what you wanted to name them?"

Uma blinked dazedly. "Healthy?" she repeated.

"We've got to bring them inside," the old nun said, a bit sternly. "And you, too. Have to check the three of you over, _properly_."

No. No, no, no, they couldn't look at her "properly", couldn't look at her baby and see that he was different.

Impulsively, Uma gathered up both of the sleeping bundles from the young nun's arms and told the whole group of them, "We were never here." She watched, with satisfaction, as their eyes glazed over, forgetting.

Then cold dread shot through her. _Stupid!_

"Wait! Which one was in the basket?"

The nuns looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Which baby was in the basket, and which came out of me?" she demanded, even though she knew they couldn't answer, couldn't remember, probably couldn't even speak at the moment, still recovering. "Agh!" She stood, and the nuns' dull gazes followed her movement. "Go back to your church then," she told them, and they did, in an orderly line, like dazed ducks. "Sweet dreams."

They had been trying to help. They had thought they were being kind. It was her own fault that she had let herself get frustrated, had let Maleficent and Armageddon distract her, had let her eyes close for even a moment.

Uma climbed into her car and examined both babies, thoroughly. She hadn't looked at the Adversary enough, earlier, to recognize him now. The babies did look different: different eye colors, different nose shapes, one pudgier than the other. But which was which? She could see elements of herself and Gil in both, if she was determined to look for them. After fifteen minutes had elapsed, she slipped both babies into the basket, which was still in the back seat, and ran a hand over her own face. She could feel the dried tears on her cheeks. When had she cried? Probably when they'd been trying to drag her into the church, but maybe during the birth. Between the front seats, her phone vibrated. She let out a breath and extricated it from where it was wedged in. She had been getting texts and calls from Harry and Gil and Audrey for half an hour now.

She sent out a text to let them know she was alive, then started the car.

~~

“You had the baby?” Audrey said, her tone halfway between the obligatory cooing awe and the also-appropriate quiet distress.

“Actually, I have two,” Uma said. She was _all_ distress as she descended into the chair Harry was pulling out for her.

“Twins?” Gil blurted out.

“Not exactly.” Uma set the basket down on a table and removed one baby from it, handed him to Audrey for swaddling, then removed the second baby and held him in her arms. Her expression was tense. “One of them is the Antichrist.”

“Which one?” Audrey asked, so startled that she nearly dropped the baby she was wrapping up.

“I don’t know.” She said it nearly through her teeth. “It was dark, and they got mixed up.”

“Wait, one of them is the Antichrist, and the other one isn’t the Antichrist, and you _lost track_ of which is which?” Audrey’s voice was climbing octaves at an alarming rate.

“Believe it or not, I’m pretty upset about it, too!”

“Hey, hey,” Harry soothed, rubbing circles on Uma’s back. He was crouched at her side, not in a chair himself, but half-kneeling next to her. “You’ve had a hard night, yeah?”

"Corporeality sucks," Uma confirmed gruffly.

"Ooh, did labor hurt for you like it hurts for humans?" Audrey asked.

"It didn't tickle."

"What do we...do about...this?" Gil asked. He looked as though he would be pacing if he weren't so lost; he kept starting to move and then pulling back.

"I don't know which is which, and I won't give away ours," Uma said, answering the question without answering it.

"You can't mean you're thinking of keeping both," Audrey exclaimed.

"Make it an even five," Uma said dryly.

"Five is odd."

"Make it an odd five."

"It would be six, though, including the new baby: 'four' was referring to the four of us who would be raising the first baby, so it's six altogether."

"Dree, I swear..."

"But how can we even...What does the Antichrist do? I mean, I know what he 'does', but...Isn't it dangerous?"

"I don't know," Uma said, "but if, right now, I can't tell it from a baby who _isn't_ dangerous..." She trailed off, mid-thought, and shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, they're gonna have to just be twins. You guys cool with that?" Despite her attempt at sounding sure, her hands were trembling visibly. Harry interlocked his fingers with hers without causing her to let go of the baby with either hand.

"I'm with yeh, no matter what," he said.

"Me too," Gil said.

Audrey looked down at the baby in her own arms. "Maybe if we raise them with love and compassion, whichever one is the Antichrist...won't be."

"UMA," Maleficent's voice suddenly barked from a nearby radio, and everyone jumped nearly a foot in the air before they realized that it was just her voice and not the demoness herself. "Have you delivered our young master to his destination?"

The room's occupants were comically still, as though any movement could alert Maleficent to the fact that there were two humans and an angel here with the addressee. Audrey glanced frantically at each of the babies in turn, frightened they would make a sound. (The fact that a baby noise would not necessarily inform Maleficent of any wrongdoing on their part was momentarily lost on all of them.)

Uma took a shaking breath and, with a convincing approximation of her usual dry tone, retorted, "What do _you_ think?"

Predictably, Maleficent snapped, "Just answer the question, you insufferable little runt!"

Uma made eye contact with Harry, then Gil, and lastly Audrey. Their faces were open as a book: Harry's jaw was tight with fury at Maleficent's insult to her; Gil's eyebrows were pulled together with mixed concern and hope; and Audrey...Audrey's eyes were wide. The wrinkly little infant in her arms (in her subconsciously tightening hold) squirmed a little, but thankfully made no noise. "Yes, obviously. What else would I do with him? He's with his family," she told Maleficent, and the crackle of the radio as the latter disconnected told them she was satisfied with this answer, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said in the summary, I'm not thrilled with the quality of this chapter, but I'd rather post it in its imperfect state than make people wait forever for me to get it the way I want it. Please comment! Likes, dislikes, thoughts, anything. I love to read them, and they motivate me to keep working on the fic. And if you have ideas for baby names, go ahead and toss those in there, too! ;D

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please comment! Depending on reception and feedback, this story will probably be lower-priority than most of my others, but I do plan on writing more.


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